Autocthon: A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences.
No, it is not.
It is if you make a few assumptions regarding relative statistical weightings of paragon stats vs gear stats.
After a certain point 20% paragon = 20% mainstat = 20% faster kill speed
The lower paragon levels will have the most statistical discrepancy because 1 paragon point means more relative to total stats. Currently maximum main stat on items is about 10k. Assuming we ignore the first 800 points of paragon in order for paragon to be 50% of main stat you need 2800. At which point a 20% difference in paragon level (another 20% main stat paragon) equates to 10% more DPS. By the time you've reached 10k paragon you have 84% of main stat from paragon levels and another 20% paragon level equates to ~17% more DPS.
Eventually any given relative paragon level difference becomes essentially a relative DPS difference. Which is really what my statement is about. Until that point there will be some competitive drift but we're already well beyond the point where we will be seeing exceptionally significant drift.
Please forgive them, for they know not what they speak. And please, oh lord, allow this thread and threads like it to wither away and die as they should.
Amen.
Service is over, BG has provided us with the ammo we need to tear his entire thread to the ground, please leave in an orderly fashion or go down with the ship.
Please forgive them, for they know not what they speak. And please, oh lord, allow this thread and threads like it to wither away and die as they should.
Amen.
Service is over, BG has provided us with the ammo we need to tear his entire thread to the ground, please leave in an orderly fashion or go down with the ship.
I thought it was a very interesting discussion, regardless of who and what I agree with. We should always welcome discussions this well thought out and extensive. What you're doing is not in any way helpful to foster understanding of the games intricacies. You just pulled out a shotgun and opened fire.
Cap the paragon level at 800 for GRs. This takes paragon out of the equation, levels the playing field, and places the emphasis on gear stats and skill. The additional paragon could still be used for bounties and rifts.
Discussion is far from over Arydor. The ship just leaved the harbor. I expect such threads to be re-created on the forums during the whole Season 4. This topic will be re-discovered and re-discussed by the players just as the topic with the trials mechanic was. It all boils down to when blizzard will finally hear the community.
I was thinking a little bit about this. Since mainly paragon will decide, and not gear (I work full time, have 2 kids, but at least in S1 I was top 60 Crusader, and that without ancient weapon, BTW I never got an ancient Blade of Prophecy, from the 30 or so that dropped after ancient patch). I was just over P600 then.
I would like everybody to give at least some chance to compete on leaderboard (where as, I am the casual one here, compared to others that just have more time to play the game and grind paragons).
My idea is, that, at least for seasons (let non-seasons have the power creep), main stat and vitality should be limited to 100 points invested each (that would be like a Paragon cap of 1000) - due to power creep, even the average Joe playing 3-4 hours a day should be able to reach that P lvl in a season now. Everything else that goes over P1000 should be added as a chance to find ancient legendaries. Let's say 500 paragons give you 10% better chance to find ancients, actually, the 10+10% chance for a leg to be ancient.
This would give those that play more bigger chances to find ancients, also it will still be hard to compete with them as an "average" player, since they will have much more time to fish for better rifts, but at least having a chance as an average player to compete on leaderboards.
This season I took a break of one and a half month from D3, since I saw there is no chance I can compete (since I don't have a group to farm for 55+ keys - solo I farm 50-51, but that's just not enough).
NOTE: Despite the "fix", paragon is still an issue and, depending on how long season 4 will last, will be an even larger issue as it was in season 3 due to the fact that XP gain will even be more inflated. The core issues are still relevant, and the solutions proposed should still work. Note that CAPPING paragon is not really a solution - better would be to either 1) let it continue to scale exponentially after 750 (best solution), or 2) remove XP gear (it's the same as MF gear in D3V), or 3) lower the benefits paragon gives after level 800 (probably the best overall and feasible solution as it also works retroactively on non-season).
Make a steep curve 800-1000, where every lvl awards 5 main stats.
Make it really steep, so that 1000 is nigh impossible to attain in one season.
starting from parangon 800, every death makes you lose a fixed percentage of your level's xp.
So that the closer you are to 1000, the more xp you lose.
Make a parangon leaderboard.
It promotes skillful play, a reason to push forward, excitement, and a possibility to catch up with some higher parangon player by other means than just playing more hours. And bragging rights. That's right. Bragging rights.
death was chosen not to be punished in soft core. Let's face it, if you're gonna make it to lvl 800, you're not the typical casual gamer this rule was designed for. It may be too hard for some... But if tough competition isn't what you're in for, either you won't hit parangon 800 at all in a season, or you'll focus on some other aspect of the game starting p800.
Whats more, while 1000 stats point is a boost to any character, it is a manageable amount ... And doesn't provide unfair advantage. If this is not enough, feel free to change the above to 1200, 1500, 2000, whatever. The idea is that the higher you are, the most xp you lose per death, so it does not only take long to go far, it must be skillful play too, else you're farming for nothing....
A half-way solution is to keep the parangon leveling curve as it is, but a death makes you lose a constant fraction of your cumulative xp, e.g one thousand of the cumulative xp.
season xp roll over to non season would need to be redesigned.
@wiwh: Blizzard will never make death take away paragon level. This was already discussed long time ago and the devs said this would hurt the casual players.
Read Again. Make it start hurting as soon as it is safe to assume that we are out of casual territory, eg p800.
Casuals won't get affected. More dedicated will have a reason to push and compete.
this was d2 system and I loved it. It really meant something to be high level (until botting appeared)
Also, it was already discussed long time ago that parangon would work just as they do now, but let's face it: it's no good. So the "long time ago" type of argument is invalid so long as we wanna change something, since changing something means going against what was discussed.
and this would be a nice change for season. How would it roll over to non season is another issue entirely, but nobody cares about non season leaderboards.
@wiwh: Don't get me wrong, I like the idea death to be punishable, as in D2. It just won't happen. Also, the dev's definition of "casual players" is not something well defined. At least I came to that conclusion after watching the ZiggyD interview, in which Mr. Jang defended endless paragon. It seems the devs think a lot of casual players are going to reach P800 on season and thus capping (of whatever form) is not a good option. And I clearly don't think they are honest here. If they destroy XP gear, only the competitive players are going to make P800+ during the season. Thus logically paragon needs to be capped in order the competition to be further stimulated between these players (the 2% of all as they said in the interview). And again these 2% are NOT a priority for blizzard (also from interview), which is of course quite understandable. So we need a solution, which won't hurt in any way the casual players and at the same time will be optimal for the people who want to compete.
From my thread on the US forums here are the possible solutions suggested until now by the community:
1) Split the leaderboards in categories: Less than P400, P400 ~ P800, P800 ~ P1200 etc...
2) Don't use the main stat bonus after P800 on seasons only
3) Cap the paragon to some value (P800 for example) when entering in a GR
4) Split the GR in 2 modes - ranked and unranked. When playing ranked you will have a chance to place in the leaderboard, but atm you enter a GR your paragon will be capped to some value (as in #3). When playing unranked you will use all the advantage of your paragon, but you won't be able to place in the leaderboard.
And, again, I think #2 is the best option, because it will further separate seasonal mode from non-seasonal in a unique way. The only downside will be for the 24/7 season-only players, who won't take advantage of that main stat bonus after P800. The other 24/7 players will just go and play non-season after they reached their max times on the leaderboards. And this will be only for some weeks probably, because when GR fishing is stimulated (when the players have more time for it, instead of grinding paragon) it will be way harder to reach that #1 spot. Also this will further reduce the GR variance -> sooner or later the 24/7 players will get that dream rift.
@Skelos_bg: All those 4 solutions you listed deal with the SYMPTOMS, but not with the CAUSE of the issues (a leveling system that is not exponential; a leveling system that becomes more attractive as you go higher; a leveling system that is 10x more effective in a specific play mode, i.e., group GRs with XP gear as opposed to solo bounties in full DPS gear). And all 4 solutions you mentioned fall into one of two categories with major drawbacks:
2+3 are about capping, which is just bad because it removes a part of endgame (John Yang explained that in the interview).
1+4 split the community even further (we already have HC, SC, season, non-season, and 3 different regions, 4 if you coun't china - that's 12 to 16 communities, not even dividing the solo/group oriented players).
A solution should not address the symptoms (too high paragon level, too much power creep, players pigeonholed in group GRs with XP gear) but the issues (make paragon leveling exponential, give paragon benefits diminishing returns, remove XP gear). Even addressing one or two of those would fix the system. However, whenever people bring up "cap" it becomes really easy for the community and developers to argue why "the solution is bad" and that's how we ended up with another season where this issue is totally unaddressed.
@Bagstone: They can remove XP gear anytime. And I hope they do this sooner. They can't scale paragon differently until the expansion, when we will see Paragon 3.0 for sure. So there are two options for the players who don't like the current system: a) Give them one of the suggestions in my previous post OR Loose them until the expansion comes (July 2016 at earliest). It's their (the dev's) choice (I already wrote this).
... They can't scale paragon differently until the expansion, when we will see Paragon 3.0 for sure ...
It's very bold to say that something is sure when it comes to Diablo III I still hope that some exp-tuning will be made after Season 4, and that's how far my optimism goes to.
If anything it will get 3x worse with the speed runs since xp is now divided. I think we wont see ant fixes till the xpansion though. I play 2-3 hours a day i finally hit 800 and might make top 500 if i find a group and thats fine with me. Another huge issue is bots and thud which needs to be addressed.
I don't see why we have to make drastic changes to the game to please 1-2% of players? I'm sure most of these suggested changes will push more than 1-2% of players away from the game. This game is meant that the more you play, the more powerful you become. Capping/removing paragon would defeat the purpose. Next the competitive players will want to reduce the range that an item can roll, because it's not fair somebody else has a perfect roll, while they are 7 mainstat away from a perfect roll.
The best solution, IMO, would be an option for you to select a button which caps your paragon points, and then you place in the "competitive" leader boards.
Whatever the "solution" is though, it's not fair to impose something on the whole fanbase, when it only benefits a small minority of players.
Whatever the "solution" is though, it's not fair to impose something on the whole fanbase, when it only benefits a small minority of players.
Absolutely! Nobody disagrees with this. The idea is to please all the players and no one to feel unsatisfied with what the game offers him. Here are the group of players for which the current paragon/xp mechanic is a problem:
- Those who don't want paragon to be the central focus of the ranking system
- Solo-only players who want fair competition
- People who view paragon leveling as killing the other aspects of the game
- Those who don't have 18 hours a day free, but want to compete
- Players who don't enjoy certain paragon leveling mechanics (aka leeching)
- Those who hate botting (endless paragon welcomes it)
You can see for yourself what amount of the people prefer to play solo:
That (the solo players) is 80% of the players who took part in the poll. Let's say 10% of them want fair competition, the other 90% don't care about leaderboards. This equals to 8%, which won't like this mechanic. And this is only 1 group from the 6 mentioned above. Now I had to ask you to define "whole fanbase", because clearly D3 is going to lose more players than to gain from this. Remember that S4 has not started as of now and a lot of people are still not aware of this issue. If they were, they could probably find other downsides to this from their pov. So a solution is needed and I hope the devs are going to realize this during S4. At least they have the right percents. We have only those from the poll and the people writing in the forums. But for the obvious things you don't need Math at all.
IMO, Diablo was never meant to be a skill game. If you want a skill game go play Halo or COD. Diablo is a game about grinding, hacking n slashing, and continuously improving. Introducing paragon was a smart move to continue the "power increasedness", and making paragon unlimited was even smarter. I'm not sure who remembers, but before there was paragon and before there was a cap, the game got boring real fast. Again, if that's what some competitive players want then fine... but don't ruin the game for the rest of us please
Only have leader boards where Paragon is disabled, I don't care. Just don't take away my paragon and don't make it less useful
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24k views, the thread, nice!
ZiggyD will interview Lead Designer - Kevin Martens and Associate Designer - John Yang this Thursday, so you can up-vote the paragon problem issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3he15r/i_have_an_interview_with_lead_designer_kevin/
#sololivesmatter
#soloplayersmatter
Here I thought this was a thread about the #1 problem in the console version of D3.
I could be wrong. I could be right.
It is if you make a few assumptions regarding relative statistical weightings of paragon stats vs gear stats.
After a certain point 20% paragon = 20% mainstat = 20% faster kill speed
The lower paragon levels will have the most statistical discrepancy because 1 paragon point means more relative to total stats. Currently maximum main stat on items is about 10k. Assuming we ignore the first 800 points of paragon in order for paragon to be 50% of main stat you need 2800. At which point a 20% difference in paragon level (another 20% main stat paragon) equates to 10% more DPS. By the time you've reached 10k paragon you have 84% of main stat from paragon levels and another 20% paragon level equates to ~17% more DPS.
Eventually any given relative paragon level difference becomes essentially a relative DPS difference. Which is really what my statement is about. Until that point there will be some competitive drift but we're already well beyond the point where we will be seeing exceptionally significant drift.
Dear God,
Please forgive them, for they know not what they speak. And please, oh lord, allow this thread and threads like it to wither away and die as they should.
Amen.
Service is over, BG has provided us with the ammo we need to tear his entire thread to the ground, please leave in an orderly fashion or go down with the ship.
I thought it was a very interesting discussion, regardless of who and what I agree with. We should always welcome discussions this well thought out and extensive. What you're doing is not in any way helpful to foster understanding of the games intricacies. You just pulled out a shotgun and opened fire.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Cap the paragon level at 800 for GRs. This takes paragon out of the equation, levels the playing field, and places the emphasis on gear stats and skill. The additional paragon could still be used for bounties and rifts.
Discussion is far from over Arydor. The ship just leaved the harbor. I expect such threads to be re-created on the forums during the whole Season 4. This topic will be re-discovered and re-discussed by the players just as the topic with the trials mechanic was. It all boils down to when blizzard will finally hear the community.
I was thinking a little bit about this. Since mainly paragon will decide, and not gear (I work full time, have 2 kids, but at least in S1 I was top 60 Crusader, and that without ancient weapon, BTW I never got an ancient Blade of Prophecy, from the 30 or so that dropped after ancient patch). I was just over P600 then.
I would like everybody to give at least some chance to compete on leaderboard (where as, I am the casual one here, compared to others that just have more time to play the game and grind paragons).
My idea is, that, at least for seasons (let non-seasons have the power creep), main stat and vitality should be limited to 100 points invested each (that would be like a Paragon cap of 1000) - due to power creep, even the average Joe playing 3-4 hours a day should be able to reach that P lvl in a season now. Everything else that goes over P1000 should be added as a chance to find ancient legendaries. Let's say 500 paragons give you 10% better chance to find ancients, actually, the 10+10% chance for a leg to be ancient.
This would give those that play more bigger chances to find ancients, also it will still be hard to compete with them as an "average" player, since they will have much more time to fish for better rifts, but at least having a chance as an average player to compete on leaderboards.
This season I took a break of one and a half month from D3, since I saw there is no chance I can compete (since I don't have a group to farm for 55+ keys - solo I farm 50-51, but that's just not enough).
My D3 armory
My Youtube Channel
Updated chart for 2.3:
http://en.file-upload.net/download-10860280/paragon10000.csv.html
Here the updated charts:
http://i.imgur.com/oQqcgLr.png
http://i.imgur.com/afsOofm.png
http://i.imgur.com/8IyVG1j.png
NOTE: Despite the "fix", paragon is still an issue and, depending on how long season 4 will last, will be an even larger issue as it was in season 3 due to the fact that XP gain will even be more inflated. The core issues are still relevant, and the solutions proposed should still work. Note that CAPPING paragon is not really a solution - better would be to either 1) let it continue to scale exponentially after 750 (best solution), or 2) remove XP gear (it's the same as MF gear in D3V), or 3) lower the benefits paragon gives after level 800 (probably the best overall and feasible solution as it also works retroactively on non-season).
On topic: another solution:
Make a steep curve 800-1000, where every lvl awards 5 main stats.
Make it really steep, so that 1000 is nigh impossible to attain in one season.
starting from parangon 800, every death makes you lose a fixed percentage of your level's xp.
So that the closer you are to 1000, the more xp you lose.
Make a parangon leaderboard.
It promotes skillful play, a reason to push forward, excitement, and a possibility to catch up with some higher parangon player by other means than just playing more hours. And bragging rights. That's right. Bragging rights.
death was chosen not to be punished in soft core. Let's face it, if you're gonna make it to lvl 800, you're not the typical casual gamer this rule was designed for. It may be too hard for some... But if tough competition isn't what you're in for, either you won't hit parangon 800 at all in a season, or you'll focus on some other aspect of the game starting p800.
Whats more, while 1000 stats point is a boost to any character, it is a manageable amount ... And doesn't provide unfair advantage. If this is not enough, feel free to change the above to 1200, 1500, 2000, whatever. The idea is that the higher you are, the most xp you lose per death, so it does not only take long to go far, it must be skillful play too, else you're farming for nothing....
A half-way solution is to keep the parangon leveling curve as it is, but a death makes you lose a constant fraction of your cumulative xp, e.g one thousand of the cumulative xp.
season xp roll over to non season would need to be redesigned.
@wiwh: Blizzard will never make death take away paragon level. This was already discussed long time ago and the devs said this would hurt the casual players.
Read Again. Make it start hurting as soon as it is safe to assume that we are out of casual territory, eg p800.
Casuals won't get affected. More dedicated will have a reason to push and compete.
this was d2 system and I loved it. It really meant something to be high level (until botting appeared)
Also, it was already discussed long time ago that parangon would work just as they do now, but let's face it: it's no good. So the "long time ago" type of argument is invalid so long as we wanna change something, since changing something means going against what was discussed.
and this would be a nice change for season. How would it roll over to non season is another issue entirely, but nobody cares about non season leaderboards.
@wiwh: Don't get me wrong, I like the idea death to be punishable, as in D2. It just won't happen. Also, the dev's definition of "casual players" is not something well defined. At least I came to that conclusion after watching the ZiggyD interview, in which Mr. Jang defended endless paragon. It seems the devs think a lot of casual players are going to reach P800 on season and thus capping (of whatever form) is not a good option. And I clearly don't think they are honest here. If they destroy XP gear, only the competitive players are going to make P800+ during the season. Thus logically paragon needs to be capped in order the competition to be further stimulated between these players (the 2% of all as they said in the interview). And again these 2% are NOT a priority for blizzard (also from interview), which is of course quite understandable. So we need a solution, which won't hurt in any way the casual players and at the same time will be optimal for the people who want to compete.
From my thread on the US forums here are the possible solutions suggested until now by the community:
1) Split the leaderboards in categories: Less than P400, P400 ~ P800, P800 ~ P1200 etc...
2) Don't use the main stat bonus after P800 on seasons only
3) Cap the paragon to some value (P800 for example) when entering in a GR
4) Split the GR in 2 modes - ranked and unranked. When playing ranked you will have a chance to place in the leaderboard, but atm you enter a GR your paragon will be capped to some value (as in #3). When playing unranked you will use all the advantage of your paragon, but you won't be able to place in the leaderboard.
And, again, I think #2 is the best option, because it will further separate seasonal mode from non-seasonal in a unique way. The only downside will be for the 24/7 season-only players, who won't take advantage of that main stat bonus after P800. The other 24/7 players will just go and play non-season after they reached their max times on the leaderboards. And this will be only for some weeks probably, because when GR fishing is stimulated (when the players have more time for it, instead of grinding paragon) it will be way harder to reach that #1 spot. Also this will further reduce the GR variance -> sooner or later the 24/7 players will get that dream rift.
@Skelos_bg: All those 4 solutions you listed deal with the SYMPTOMS, but not with the CAUSE of the issues (a leveling system that is not exponential; a leveling system that becomes more attractive as you go higher; a leveling system that is 10x more effective in a specific play mode, i.e., group GRs with XP gear as opposed to solo bounties in full DPS gear). And all 4 solutions you mentioned fall into one of two categories with major drawbacks:
2+3 are about capping, which is just bad because it removes a part of endgame (John Yang explained that in the interview).
1+4 split the community even further (we already have HC, SC, season, non-season, and 3 different regions, 4 if you coun't china - that's 12 to 16 communities, not even dividing the solo/group oriented players).
A solution should not address the symptoms (too high paragon level, too much power creep, players pigeonholed in group GRs with XP gear) but the issues (make paragon leveling exponential, give paragon benefits diminishing returns, remove XP gear). Even addressing one or two of those would fix the system. However, whenever people bring up "cap" it becomes really easy for the community and developers to argue why "the solution is bad" and that's how we ended up with another season where this issue is totally unaddressed.
@Bagstone: They can remove XP gear anytime. And I hope they do this sooner. They can't scale paragon differently until the expansion, when we will see Paragon 3.0 for sure. So there are two options for the players who don't like the current system: a) Give them one of the suggestions in my previous post OR Loose them until the expansion comes (July 2016 at earliest). It's their (the dev's) choice (I already wrote this).
It's very bold to say that something is sure when it comes to Diablo III I still hope that some exp-tuning will be made after Season 4, and that's how far my optimism goes to.
If anything it will get 3x worse with the speed runs since xp is now divided. I think we wont see ant fixes till the xpansion though. I play 2-3 hours a day i finally hit 800 and might make top 500 if i find a group and thats fine with me. Another huge issue is bots and thud which needs to be addressed.
I don't see why we have to make drastic changes to the game to please 1-2% of players? I'm sure most of these suggested changes will push more than 1-2% of players away from the game. This game is meant that the more you play, the more powerful you become. Capping/removing paragon would defeat the purpose. Next the competitive players will want to reduce the range that an item can roll, because it's not fair somebody else has a perfect roll, while they are 7 mainstat away from a perfect roll.
The best solution, IMO, would be an option for you to select a button which caps your paragon points, and then you place in the "competitive" leader boards.
Whatever the "solution" is though, it's not fair to impose something on the whole fanbase, when it only benefits a small minority of players.
Absolutely! Nobody disagrees with this. The idea is to please all the players and no one to feel unsatisfied with what the game offers him. Here are the group of players for which the current paragon/xp mechanic is a problem:
- Those who don't want paragon to be the central focus of the ranking system
- Solo-only players who want fair competition
- People who view paragon leveling as killing the other aspects of the game
- Those who don't have 18 hours a day free, but want to compete
- Players who don't enjoy certain paragon leveling mechanics (aka leeching)
- Those who hate botting (endless paragon welcomes it)
You can see for yourself what amount of the people prefer to play solo:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3hz1kt/do_you_prefer_group_play_or_solo/
That (the solo players) is 80% of the players who took part in the poll. Let's say 10% of them want fair competition, the other 90% don't care about leaderboards. This equals to 8%, which won't like this mechanic. And this is only 1 group from the 6 mentioned above. Now I had to ask you to define "whole fanbase", because clearly D3 is going to lose more players than to gain from this. Remember that S4 has not started as of now and a lot of people are still not aware of this issue. If they were, they could probably find other downsides to this from their pov. So a solution is needed and I hope the devs are going to realize this during S4. At least they have the right percents. We have only those from the poll and the people writing in the forums. But for the obvious things you don't need Math at all.
IMO, Diablo was never meant to be a skill game. If you want a skill game go play Halo or COD. Diablo is a game about grinding, hacking n slashing, and continuously improving. Introducing paragon was a smart move to continue the "power increasedness", and making paragon unlimited was even smarter. I'm not sure who remembers, but before there was paragon and before there was a cap, the game got boring real fast. Again, if that's what some competitive players want then fine... but don't ruin the game for the rest of us please
Only have leader boards where Paragon is disabled, I don't care. Just don't take away my paragon and don't make it less useful