On April 16 2023 23:53 ProMeTheus112 wrote: Also there is a good remark a french youtuber made it's something I often think about too in the A/RPGs, he said he's wondering but it looks like with so many tiers of powers for the items and the way they drop there is a risk that any farming that you do early on will be made completely irrelevant after you reach some threshold or endgame, and that he wished that the game made farming in the early levels rewarding, not only endgame farming, but at all levels. I super agree with that. I think D2 has this to a good extent btw thanks to MF, upgrading uniques/sets, and many things that have lowish requirements or may drop early having value until hell. Well HC mode also helps with that but wanted to mention. Oh also wow vanilla is quite good at this (because a lot of early items have value for crafting at high levels, and because gold values and item stats don't grow to outscale too much, also you're never really done upgrading your low level char till the end no matter how much you slow it down etc).
I'm not saying you're wrong to want this here but I'm trying to understand the intended context and model what that might look like when applied properly in a game. I think loosely you could say that leveling maybe works this way, with the value of a level 2 skill point in Diablo2 being the same as a level 98 skill point (there are nuances here obviously, like skills being unlocked at certain levels or other prerequisites, or skills with diminishing returns, but let's ignore that for now) - in the end, you're still earning a single skill point that you can spend wherever you choose.to empower your character.
In an item treadmill model, older items necessarily must become obsolete because the enemies get stronger and the only way for a player to survive is through itemization, and this also doubles as a perpetual engagement method. Certainly the older/lower-level items have value to their intended audiences of new players or twinks but they never maintain relevance throughout the game by design. It's a tricky proposal to upend this model because higher-level players kill faster and travel faster, and higher-level players can also kit themselves out with more MF which gives them an unfair advantage in finding low-level uniques, thereby monopolizing their value.
I can think of two ideas that employ your concept of permanent relevance in a very rough way, but neither of them sound very fun to me (maybe you'd have better ones): 1. Just like how the D2 Block formula decays with level (forcing you to pump 2 points into Dex every level if you want to maintain the listed block rate of your shield), some sort of "upkeep" where unique items have increasing "soft" stat requirements with each level. For example, a level 2 unique axe having +100% MF +10 all stats requiring 10 Str to equip. When you level up to 3, it still requires 10 Str to equip, but now it has +90% MF +9 stats unless you have 11 Str, in which case it would go back to +100% MF +10 stats. Level 4, now it's +80% MF +8 stats for 10 Str, +90% MF +9 stats for 11 Str, and +100% MF +10 stats for 12 Str. You would need to keep investing to maintain the stat line. 2. Crafting recipes that upgrade the item's stats similar to D2's Cube, except there would have to be a lot of them. The recipe ingredients would have to be based on drops centered around the target level, similar to WoW's dozens of bandage tiers.
On April 16 2023 23:53 ProMeTheus112 wrote: Also there is a good remark a french youtuber made it's something I often think about too in the A/RPGs, he said he's wondering but it looks like with so many tiers of powers for the items and the way they drop there is a risk that any farming that you do early on will be made completely irrelevant after you reach some threshold or endgame, and that he wished that the game made farming in the early levels rewarding, not only endgame farming, but at all levels. I super agree with that. I think D2 has this to a good extent btw thanks to MF, upgrading uniques/sets, and many things that have lowish requirements or may drop early having value until hell. Well HC mode also helps with that but wanted to mention. Oh also wow vanilla is quite good at this (because a lot of early items have value for crafting at high levels, and because gold values and item stats don't grow to outscale too much, also you're never really done upgrading your low level char till the end no matter how much you slow it down etc).
I'm not saying you're wrong to want this here but I'm trying to understand the intended context and model what that might look like when applied properly in a game. I think loosely you could say that leveling maybe works this way, with the value of a level 2 skill point in Diablo2 being the same as a level 98 skill point (there are nuances here obviously, like skills being unlocked at certain levels or other prerequisites, or skills with diminishing returns, but let's ignore that for now) - in the end, you're still earning a single skill point that you can spend wherever you choose.to empower your character.
In an item treadmill model, older items necessarily must become obsolete because the enemies get stronger and the only way for a player to survive is through itemization, and this also doubles as a perpetual engagement method. Certainly the older/lower-level items have value to their intended audiences of new players or twinks but they never maintain relevance throughout the game by design. It's a tricky proposal to upend this model because higher-level players kill faster and travel faster, and higher-level players can also kit themselves out with more MF which gives them an unfair advantage in finding low-level uniques, thereby monopolizing their value.
I can think of two ideas that employ your concept of permanent relevance in a very rough way, but neither of them sound very fun to me (maybe you'd have better ones): 1. Just like how the D2 Block formula decays with level (forcing you to pump 2 points into Dex every level if you want to maintain the listed block rate of your shield), some sort of "upkeep" where unique items have increasing "soft" stat requirements with each level. For example, a level 2 unique axe having +100% MF +10 all stats requiring 10 Str to equip. When you level up to 3, it still requires 10 Str to equip, but now it has +90% MF +9 stats unless you have 11 Str, in which case it would go back to +100% MF +10 stats. Level 4, now it's +80% MF +8 stats for 10 Str, +90% MF +9 stats for 11 Str, and +100% MF +10 stats for 12 Str. You would need to keep investing to maintain the stat line. 2. Crafting recipes that upgrade the item's stats similar to D2's Cube, except there would have to be a lot of them. The recipe ingredients would have to be based on drops centered around the target level, similar to WoW's dozens of bandage tiers.
I think of one main thing which is that the stat increases on items and other things per level have to be very small for items to have relevance to the end. If you only get a potential few points of extra stats for an amazing find of 10 levels later compared to an amazing find 10 levels earlier, amazing finds at the early game may still be pretty amazing by the endgame. That doesn't really take away from the diversity of build but instead potentially the opposite. One of the things it would affect is that the early game retains some difficulty when you're highly geared, and you can't necessarily overcome harder challenges by "out-statting" them.
In D2, as you run though the game there are many items that can drop in NM that are useful potentially throughout hell mode. For example one of the best rings actually has the most chance to drop from some act in nightmare mode. MF is also kind of hard to build without impacting your character, so the earlier you start building it, the more stuff you find which helps you build it more, which largely rewards slowing down your character and getting more stuff from earlier acts (ofc this is especially interesting to HC characters ; notably your character can be good at soloing anything). But for other reasons it's not really hard to skip on that completely though there will definitely be cons to that.
In Wow Vanilla I think they deliberately went the path of small/very small stat increases per level to achieve this and it works, many of good/great items you can get at lower levels have purpose for dozens of hours if you will and some are still useful at 60 or give you reasonable power to win fights even in pvp (in fact they give you an advantage at it all the way to 60, help you a lot at 60 and more). Eventually the tiered raid gear (as patches come) erase this more and more at the last level and then further with the expansions.
In particular this makes the entire journey more relevant and fun as everything you do at low or any level matters and you can get stuff that will really impact your overall run and that you can trade for, always get to choose where to play and potentially face difficulty anywhere etc. Gives incentive to all players to run these extra places at all stages etc.
Ofc the upgrade recipes and stuff of D2 are another thing that help this and yeah there are a lot lol it's hard to keep track of them sometimes, now they have been adding some more and they don't even appear on the same web pages but you can upgrade the low sets for example with some runes etc. Runes can be kind of like this also, they drop not so often but in a lot of early places the best runes are pretty valuable and you can do something with them at high level. Tbh I think both D2 and wow vanilla were definitely thought with this in mind, just thought a game like this could go even further with this in ways, something I was definitely hoping from D3 but it was the opposite.
I think the best example of early finds being useful later in the game are rune drops, where early drops are often useful for mid-lategame runewords. I agree that a lot of NM items are good all the way through hell, viper and lidless f.e.. Tbf D2 has a bit of a problem with a lot of hell items in that their stat requirements are too high for what they actually provide compared to NM items. There's also the fact that drops are quite whack in D2, so the game can just drop you a bunch of shit and you keep running your mediocre normal items in NM and at times in hell.
On the slots where rare is BIS you can also find quite decent ones early on. Double res + MF boots can drop all the way back in A5 normal IIRC f.e. so it's worth to keep on fishing for these.
I think runes are also great in that regard cause they allow you to trade upwards really easily, so if your game just doesn't drop anything worthwhile you can still either patch that with runewords or just keep on doing good trades. I certainly prefer that f.e. to D3's gold farm especially early on during RMAH times when sets were less dominant.
Overall I really dislike how D3 just put mainstat on every slot to make sure higher items are always better. I think item treadmill needs a balance between 'find upgrades' and 'have something memorable for a few levels' and D3 vanilla definitely put 'find upgrades' always first. I hope D4 will go a different route, but am not overly optimistic in that regard from what I remember playing.
I think I like the 'skip to lategame content' button, as long as the lategame is worth playing.
On April 25 2023 22:41 Schelim wrote: it's weird to me that it's normal to have a "skip the game" button in a game. but it's cool, I'm just an old fart.
I suppose it's ok to give the player the choice of how they want to experience the game if that's a game design choice. However, when the guy said "thank you for respecting my time" only to proceed to grind repetitive events for 150 hours to reach level 100, I think something's wrong...
On April 25 2023 22:41 Schelim wrote: it's weird to me that it's normal to have a "skip the game" button in a game. but it's cool, I'm just an old fart.
I suppose it's ok to give the player the choice of how they want to experience the game if that's a game design choice. However, when the guy said "thank you for respecting my time" only to proceed to grind repetitive events for 150 hours to reach level 100, I think something's wrong...
I’m not sure if you know anything about datmodz, but “repetitive grinds” are his wheelhouse, he makes a living streaming them
On April 25 2023 23:02 Archeon wrote: I think the best example of early finds being useful later in the game are rune drops, where early drops are often useful for mid-lategame runewords. I agree that a lot of NM items are good all the way through hell, viper and lidless f.e.. Tbf D2 has a bit of a problem with a lot of hell items in that their stat requirements are too high for what they actually provide compared to NM items. There's also the fact that drops are quite whack in D2, so the game can just drop you a bunch of shit and you keep running your mediocre normal items in NM and at times in hell.
On the slots where rare is BIS you can also find quite decent ones early on. Double res + MF boots can drop all the way back in A5 normal IIRC f.e. so it's worth to keep on fishing for these.
I think runes are also great in that regard cause they allow you to trade upwards really easily, so if your game just doesn't drop anything worthwhile you can still either patch that with runewords or just keep on doing good trades. I certainly prefer that f.e. to D3's gold farm especially early on during RMAH times when sets were less dominant.
Overall I really dislike how D3 just put mainstat on every slot to make sure higher items are always better. I think item treadmill needs a balance between 'find upgrades' and 'have something memorable for a few levels' and D3 vanilla definitely put 'find upgrades' always first. I hope D4 will go a different route, but am not overly optimistic in that regard from what I remember playing.
I think I like the 'skip to lategame content' button, as long as the lategame is worth playing.
Part of the reason is that Blizzard had no idea what the hell they were doing with caster itemization in D2 vanilla and WoW vanilla. Old school mentality towards caster classes didn't help either. It was less that early drops were useful. It was more that late drops were mostly garbage.
The sorc pre-1.08 just scaled terribly, aside from static field. The best builds in vanilla just kept strength to 45-55 for that unique studded leather (forgot the name). Stuff like magefists were BiS or close to it because itemization just sucked. There was absolutely no reason for a sorc to equip exceptional or elite items unless they had well designed uniques. Nothing that exceptional or elite items offered were useful to a caster.
The mage during the Onyxia/MC raiding era in WoW is nothing more than a decurse bot. It was the weakest class in the game for raiding. Int didn't give spellpower. Spellpower gear was very rare. There was no mage armor yet arcanist robes provided int/spi. Mages were designed to spam spells then wand while oom (yup, not a real dps class). That's the reason for spirit in mage gear back then. Mages pretty much wore BWD/BWS/DM warlock gear because fuck spirit.
Mages back then kept the few pieces of spellpower and crit gear that dropped in earlier levels because our raiding gear was garbage. It wasn't until BWL was released that Blizzard totally revamped caster itemization. They retroactively changed earlier raiding gear but my guild was past MC/Onyxia by that time. I passed on all my set gear and went with non-set items.
I'm sure people with other mains have their own stories. WoW vanilla itemization was questionable until halfway through. Blizzard had no idea what scaled well, what didn't scale and what scaled too much.
On April 25 2023 22:41 Schelim wrote: it's weird to me that it's normal to have a "skip the game" button in a game. but it's cool, I'm just an old fart.
Well you can't just change the words like that. It said "skip the campaign" not skip the game. And I think almost every player beyond casual for this type of genre would agree that the campaign is not the meat of the game.
On April 25 2023 22:41 Schelim wrote: it's weird to me that it's normal to have a "skip the game" button in a game. but it's cool, I'm just an old fart.
Well you can't just change the words like that. It said "skip the campaign" not skip the game. And I think almost every player beyond casual for this type of genre would agree that the campaign is not the meat of the game.
Totally agree. And the less minimalist the campaign is, the more likely I want to skip it for future characters. I already did it in the beta. I followed the story with my first character. For my second, I decided to explore other parts of the map and clear dungeons I didn't get to with my first char.
There are a lot of situations (waiting, clicking dialogues and cutscenes away) in act 1 alone that were very annoying if you already did them once or maybe twice so I definitely appreciate that you can skip the campaign.
I asked myself in the beta already "do i want to test another class or is it too annoying to do the intro again"
On May 02 2023 03:31 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: So the cap for a party really is 4? Weird. Never played Diablo 3, but I remember in Diablo 2 it is 6, I think?
D3 was also 4 and that actually seems the most reasonable. 8 players in D2 got pretty unwieldy and I could count on one hand the number of times I had more than 4 actual friends all in the same game/party.
The problem with P8 in D2 imo is it just makes the game way too easy most of the time. +50% hp for monsters per extra player in the game and some extra +% damage doesn't match the added power of 8 partied players at all (1.10). On the other hand it can still be fun sometimes when the parties are a bit split up accross a dungeon and stuff. Guess you could do 4v4 pvp also^^ I imagined D3 max of 4 was chosen for performance reasons, D4 is probably on the same problematic (3D also harder to see what's going on + console compatibility). I think it'd be possible to balance the system differently to accomodate for 8 players or so but w/e.
The flashy effects of D3 also didn't support 8 players actually playing together. 4 players is a good number if you expect players to actually be partied. Even in D2, whenever I played sorc and used blizzard, people would get pissed. I think the power fantasy of ARPGs lend themselves better to smaller parties. Even melee chars are AoEing all over the screen. It's just too messy with too many people.
IIRC, experience is shared in D2, so it's actually not optimal for 8 players to party up because you kill shit too fast. I remember people joining 8 player act 1 games, for example, and going to act 4/5 and soloing there. Most of my games were played in parties of 1-3 people. In D3, I played a lot of games with a group of 1-3 people as well.
EPT
