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Posted By Nobunaga about 9 months ago
GAH! Can we turn down the blue lens flare and bloom effects, guys?
Let’s just get something out of the way real quick before jumping into the meat of this story. I reviewed Diablo 3 and found the game entertaining and worth my money. However, along with worrying about the game’s always-online DRM, I wondered just how long the staying power was going to be on the game. Two weeks later I had my answer as I stopped playing after grabbing a few legendary items and making just over $200 on the real-money auction house. I haven’t played since.
Did I get my enjoyment out of the game? Absolutely. Was I disappointed? Well, yes.
However, Blizzard aims to change that now with “Paragon Levels,” a special 100-level progression available to “Level Capped” characters which will slowly allow them to escalate farther up the ladder of power in tiny increments, or, rather more precisely, boosts to “Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level,” as well as 3% Magic Find per paragon level. In addition there will be a graphical modification to how people see your character with special border graphics and level indicator as you get farther and farther down the path of the Paragon.
Alright, alright, I'll admit I'm digging the borders.
“We understand that some players feel frustrated once they hit level 60 because they no longer feel like they’re making progress,” wrote game director Jay Wilson, “It can be demoralizing to play for an hour, not get any drops, and also be out a big chunk of gold from repair costs. Your play session may not only end without an upgrade, it can wind up being a net loss. Everyone wants to feel like they’re making some progress when they log in, even if they don’t get that new sword.” To be honest, it was largely the reason I stopped playing. The grind wasn’t very fun when days could go by and you’d have almost nothing to show for it.
Also of note in relation to this new system is that in the next patch (where this system is being deployed), they will be capping Magic Find at 300% (before Nephalim’s Valor, which also now gives 15% Paragon XP per stack), which means that those who progress further and further will require less and less Magic Find gear to be competitive. I believe I shall quote Blizzard’s own cinematic from another franchise when I say, “Hell… It’s About Time.”
PvP Combat… it's going to be broken as hell, but we want it.
Perhaps the best news I’ve heard regarding the system? It isn’t going to be a quick progression. For those of us who played Diablo 2, the progression to Paragon Level 100 is being compared to finally capping out a Diablo 2 character at level 99. But, on a personal note, had this system been implemented sooner, I think that Blizzard could have saved a LOT of people from discarding the game. I know dozens of people who have played the game and have since stopped for reasons that usually either involved the impossible grind for gear, or the lack of content and progression at level cap. Sure, PvP will help this as well, but all of this should have been in ages ago or at release. I honestly could have waited another 6 months for this game, and would have enjoyed it for far longer, and much more, had PvP and the Paragon system been implemented at launch.
But I guess it’s time to install it again and cross fingers, though I honestly don’t see this bringing me permanently back to the Diablo franchise anytime soon.
That was fun.
I love it.
i get the move to try and remove magic find from items since it really dose become an act of “how much magic find can i get while still beaing able to beat the content” but adding the paragon level system to add more baseline stats is just BS you are making inferno easier and lessning the value of actually beating the thing but it is typical blizzard at this point to make somthing really hard and then nerf it to the ground so casuals can beat it and it is really frustraiting. can beat somthing too bad get better.
The point being, what exactly is casual in your opinion? I’ve invested a fair amount of hours grinding inferno and I can barely survive late act 2 inferno into act 3. If a game expects you to sink around, being generous, 150+ hours into it, then unless it’s an MMO like WoW, it’s not particularly acceptable to not be able to get through all the content or difficulties presented. (Unless it’s a “skill” based game or something along those lines, Diablo never quite fit that, just my opinion)
Granted you can argue “Well you just suck.” or “buy better equipment noob”, the fact remains Diablo 3 inferno upon release allowed absolutely no build diversity, which is what development has stated they wanted for the game time and time again.
Plus Paragon itself takes quite awhile to grind up, I doubt “casual” players would ever make it beyond level 20.
Too late, for me at least. I’ve played the game over and over again, reaching lvl60 with my monk and equipping him well enough to breeze through Act 1, with only 1 or 2 deaths on Inferno (also have a lvl 51 Demon Hunter).
Playing a story driven game like D3 over and over again (not to mention only the first act in Inferno) is so boring and tiring after so many playthroughs and adding another reason to continue farming doesn’t change the fact that you keep playing the same uninspired levels again and again… and again.
If they wanted to add value to their game, they should created a multi-level random generated dungeon, not add more levels to a character.
That would be pretty awesome to have a dungeon like that.
So if i understand correctly.. Blizzard is trying to fix their grindy and boring end game… by adding more grinding? Great move bliz, great move.
I played up till about lvl 56 on my barbarian, and at that point i just couldn’t play it any longer, there just wasn’t anything interesting about the game, after you complete the story a couple of times. These “paragon levels” sure as hell aren’t gonna make me wanna play the game again
Seems like a band-aid on a bullet wound. All the topics I saw on the GFAQs Diablo 3 board were complaints about elites having rediculous combos of traits on higher difficulties making them nigh impossible to kill. It makes it so the game isn’t about having a well equipped character, it’s about being lucky to avoid encountering those kind of elites. And that’s even if you like the farming for gear, I found the game really unfulfilling and could barely finish playing through it once.
you are not made for diablo and shouldn´t have played it.
it was always about playing it over and over again and you obviously fell for the hype and didn´t inform yourself. not only that but you are also judging the game by stuff someone said on the internet without the information on their class,gear or act. therefore your information is worthless. Ofcourse there are those affixes but I,personally, very rarely find a pack I can´t kill. It´s always about knowing your borders … // B2T: I like the update. I don´t like that you are reporting about it. That makes it seem like diablo3 is catering (maybe it is but it shouldn´t) to the mmo crowd and I hate them. The update itself should be good and I hope it will make the game what it should have been from the very beginning. With the Paragon Levels it feels more like Diablo2 and that is highly appreciated. Sad thing is that school is starting wednesday and CSGO is being released today. How am I supposed to handle all this?
I didn’t play D3 over and over again because the dumbed down skill system is boring. I played Diablo 2 again and again because I could make unique characters focused on different skills, I didn’t follow build guides like the D3 devs claimed everyone did. I actually had FUN with the game, I didn’t farm it like a robot because that’s the only way to make your character more powerful.
It might appear boring at first but there are surprisingly many builds and you can make unique characters in diablo3 just as you could in diablo2. Ofcourse having main stats on gear is a stupid Idea and I would´ve liked the old system better but judging by the fact that you supposedly played it through only once you can´t really talk about that matter anyway. To some people farming like a robot is fun and ,imho, the trick is farming and having fun.
While I can’t say I liked how Blizzard handled Diablo 3 with it’s clearly unpolished lategame, I’m glad to see that at least part of the great game developer I once ‘fell in love with’ still shines through in their desire to make D3 an awesome game even after launch. For free.
Other companies may have looked at the incredibly succesful launch and called it a day. And started developing mediocre-at-best DLC.
Or maybe the RMAH just satisfied their Activision overlords and they have been given free reigns for the time being. I just hope it isn’t too late. I know I will be playing with 1.04 for a few days max until Guild Wars 2 comes out, which has quite a lot of my friends psyched and impressed me even with it’s short betas/stress tests.