I really don't think that's the reason to quit for a significant amount of players. Most people don't give a shit about the competition. They just play for themselves. Equip their char until they have everything, push grifts until they have to fish to beat it and then get bored because fishing for grifts is boring as hell. This is about 50 hours, maybe more with the augmentation of ancients. That's not good enough only for players who nolife the game...
The majority of players are quitting because of the Paragon meta. It forces you to BOT or quit your day job to remotely comptetive. Even streamers, those who sit in front of their computers for 10+ hours a day are quitting because they can't compete against the bots grinding xp.
It's a terrible end game mechanic and a false one at that.
If Blizzard and the majority of its player base is okay playing 50 hours each season then leave things the way they are. But by the looks of it, at least one of the two isn't.
I do think that the changes in 2.4 will help keep a chunk of players around for a bit longer, they still don't solve the long term issues facing the game.
The majority of players... The majority of players does not care about leaderboards. The majority of players does not care about paragon grind. The majority of players just plays the game every now and then and have their fun. Blizzard develops their games for the majority of players. That's why chars can be fully equipped after a short time. The majority only plays a short time.
What you are talking about is the loud minority. It's a common mistake to believe you are the majority just because forums are filled with people who have the same beliefs as you do. Fact is, only a teeny-tiny percentage of players uses the internet to talk about their games outside of said games. The silent majority just plays it and stops playing it because of a lot of different reasons, just to start playing it again later on.
I understand that the vast majority of players don't focalize their displeasures, and that the "loud minority" are the ones on the forum complaining, but how in the world is Blizzard supposed to address the issues if they don't know why people are leaving?
There's a reason this "loud minority" is being heard. They see an issue, that not only they, but the others they play with are experiencing and voice their opinions on fan sites and the official forums.
Take me for an example. A large portion of the players on my friends list, have left this season because of the xp grind being the end game meta. For other seasons it was exploits that caused them to leave.
When season were announced my friends list became more active than I've ever seen it. People from different games were popping into D3 to get prep'd for the new ladder/season system. And with the season one launch, I swear, out of the 100 people I have on it, 99 of them were on at any given time.
Then the exploit was found, which clearly gave people a large advantage PL wise. So, people started dropping off almost immediately, because those who found it, decided to keep it "close to the chest" until they got a clear and distinctive advantage over others, again PL wise. And since the ability to compete was thrown out the window, the started to leave.
It's clear to me, even though it's just a small personal sample size, that a lot of people, even if it's the "loud minority", are unhappy with the PL meta.
Give the majority the ability to compete and more people will play and invest more time, for longer periods into the game.
Would I be overly pleased if I sank 500 hours into a season and some dude who only sank 250 into the game, ended up higher than me on the leaderboards? I probably wouldn't, unless of course it was because his RNG was better than mine and he just so happened to outgear me.
Once again, IMO, they need to put more focus on gear and less on a life investment.
Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.
In D2 LoD exp progression was faster and many players reached the lvl cap of 99 and thus the point to complain about no more progress for sessions without an item upgrad.
WoW was in between and introduced an easy to reach and mandatory lvl cap.
Then D3V had its similar lvl cap and even more people complained about no progress for spending hours of gameplay, thus we got paragons. But even they were capped, so again yadda yadda..
Fast forward to today, seasonal leaderboards are lacking because of the massive power difference that a plvl gap brings with it. Blizz technically has no choice but to either give it a hard cap (maybe restricted to GRs) or massively reduce the stat gains to get into a D2V situation, like giving 1 strength per 20 plvls past 800. Which would be a mix between a middle finger and avoiding complaints about "being done".
Won't fix anything with a different xp distribution, sane people will always be hundreds of plvl behind the top.
Your point with the loud minority (or vocal minority, what it's more commonly called) is absolutely correct. But in the end, we (those who are complaining about paragon) have to acknowledge that we're not the main target audience for Blizzard anymore. They have to make a choice: do they want to cater the game to people that sink 99% of their video game time into just one game, and do so for hundreds or even thousands of hours every season? Or do they want to target the casual players that play any given game for a few hours here and there, and switch between games all the time?
I myself had hopes that Diablo became the first, because I don't want to play anything else. I tried a lot of game since I took a break from D3 a few weeks ago, but nothing interests me. Diablo, however, in its current form does not offer the long-term item hunt that some of its predecessors had (e.g., hunting that elusive King's Staff of Haste in Diablo 1!). If they were to cater Diablo to that style of gameplay, they might end up like so many other games - a loyal fanbase that plays the game religiously, but is very sensitive to changes (the re-spec potion in Diablo 2 was met with a lot of criticism by the die hard fans). And a very limited fanbase of probably a few hundred thousand people. The casual game experience of Diablo 3 as in patch 2.3 offers probably some of the most enjoyable short-time burst enjoyment of any ARPG ever in the history of gaming. I personally think, however, that most people are done with it in 100 hours (if played efficiently) or maybe 2-3 more than that if you play very very slowly and "inefficient".
This topic isn't new to me. I've made this case about about 3.5 ago. Actually, I voiced it even a month before that - and the reception was lukewarm. It's the same with trials or other changes in the game: The developers go through several stages. It's always the same: 1) Onset: Problem surfaces. 2) Ignorance: Problem is ignored, also due to lack of community's backing. 3) Trivialization: Problem is debated, is it really a problem and is it really relevant? 4) Denial: The problem is accepted, but the "easy" solutions are denied for various reasons (technical, gameplay, time, resources, ...). 5) Solution: The problem is being dealt with - either 5a) through the "easy" community's solution (e.g., trials) which makes you wonder why it took so long, or 5b) through a more elaborate solution (e.g., loot 2.0). I'd call 5b) the "Blizzard way" - they never want to go for the easy way. Take for example the buff bar - imagine they had just extended it to 20+ icons, you'd have to constantly look at those 20 icons to find out whether or not Focus and Restraint is up (and which one exactly). The new system is much smarter.
With paragon they were in between stages 2-3 before Blizzcon (I can't recall them talking about this before in-depth, they briefly mentioned it), and are now in between stages 3 and 4 (Wyatt's interview quin was very telling in that regard). His answer hints that they're going for another 5b) here, as he said the want to make paragon levels just something you gather "along the way", but what Quin referred to was the more important issue that paragon levels are too strong (Wyatt only addressed that paragon levels are boring to farm). However, as some people pointed out, the legendary augmentation might inflate main stats so much that augmentation might actually be a new 5b) type solution. I don't think so, but we'll see.
In any case - for me neither of that (farming 2000 paragon levels, or farming for 13 gem of 80+ for augmentation) is a desirable endgame goal. I want Diablo to be about the item hunt. I want to hunt my King's Staff of Haste again. Yes, not getting an ancient Serpent's Sparker ruined the fun in Season 3 for me. But I still kept playing for a long time. Getting all ancient weapons (thanks to the cube) in the first week ruined Season 4 for me, however - to an extent where I stopped playing. But I have accepted that I'm the minority (and apparently the vocal one), but so be it. I'll enjoy the game from time to time when new changes arrive, and see if it ever takes a different turn.
Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.
I agree on your points except for this one. Some builds needed 85+ to work, those skill points were huge.
just make pl a QoL improvement to satisfy hardcore/nolifers: put a cap to it, with a very low and unconvenient curve of growth of the char or even remove that progression in grift directly tied to exp...like level 99 in poe. -where level counts and is a demonstration of dedition and effort but most part of builds just need 80lvl to function, then it matter of gear and skill.
give back dignity to the loot hunt: trade, intelligent droprates not too grindy and intrusive, variety in gear sets and builds and classes.
d3 has population,fans and trademark, server, devs and money to make THE game to rewrite the story of arpgs...instead of leaving it agonisizing in boring grifts, botting, meaningless pl.
One of the most common complaints I've seen about Paragon lvls is, mainly, the lvling portion - The fact that it is essentially a slog of speed running GRs. Imo, blizzard DOES need to rebalance the amount of XP given by GRs to the rest of the game - Currently, no matter what, a GR gives a significantly larger amount of XP in comparision to any other content of the same level. Imo, the bonus XP provided by torment levels SHOULD be equivalent to the amount of bonus XP provided in a GR of equivalent level. In addition, just go ahead and open Torment levels all the way to 20 (Which should be roughly equivalent to GR 95 or so)
These two changes will bring Bounties and GRs closer to each other in terms of XP gain - GRs will still have the edge due to the large xp on completion and the higher mob density, but Bounties will be closer behind due to the quest turn ins.
In addition, increase the mob density of Rifts to be equivalent to that of GRs. Also, give more incentives to finish a Rift - Imo, giving each kill a very small chance to summon an additional Rift Guardian would be fine, to the point that on average you will get 1 extra RG per Rift, but RNG could give you 20 extra RGs in a Rift.
Doing these will take Paragon levels from "something you have to grind through" to "something you acquire while playing the game" as ALL activities will provide a similar amount of XP, thus no matter what you choose to do, you get good XP, rather then "Farm Rifts for keys on the most efficient-per-keystone difficult, farm speed GRs for XP"
Cains/borns and ruby in helms are getting nerfed in 2.4. Monster kill xp is getting buffed to 50%.
This is for sure happening in 2.4?
Still does not change the fact that groups will be 3-4 times higher than solo players, when in reality it should only be 2 times higher at most.
I still argue that 20-40% is the most logical, aka 2-4 players * 10%. And lets be real, even if there is a nerf to xp gains, in the end it will not be enough without a 800 paragon cap for in seasons only.
The problem is not that paragon is unlimited, the problem is that experience needed no longer increases exponentially after 750. If it would, people would be satisfied at a certain point, because it would no longer make sense (for that season) to focus on getting more levels.
Read bagstone's 'paragon 10000' thread.
I disagree with this thought completely, as 100 paragon levels will still mean a 5-6 GR difference when pushing ladders.
Honestly, there is two possible solutions to the huge gap.
A - Paragon cap at 800 (In season only!)
B - Completely rework how paragon and experience gains work.
Either way, we see the gap shrink, and once that gap shrinks, we will see diversity and parody on the ladders, really making D3 reach the level of greatness it has the potential to do.
Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.
I agree on your points except for this one. Some builds needed 85+ to work, those skill points were huge.
In Vanilla? Which class? 20 Whirlwind and 20 Spear Mastery, done
My only ever 99 char was a hybrid-pvp-pala in LoD who could use every single point and more, but again, vanilla?
I think the best idea presented is the ony with PL cap in grifts only. Plvl of 800 is not that hard to obtain, and that would allow people who go to school/have a job to compete on the leaderboards if they have the skill and items needed to do so. And still gaining exp would be rewarded, just not in grifts.
I'll never for the life of me understand these "WAH! WAH! TAKE AWAY PARAGONS!" kids.
I've literally never heard a one of them come up with a logical reason behind their opinion that didn't essentially come down to, "It's not fair cause people who play way more than others get further in the game". Yet these kids make sooooooo many posts about this crap. As if to make up for their complete lack of reason or rationality they just take to being really loud and insistent.
Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?
You people whine about "feeling like your on an endless wheel" but your solution to that is just to stop the wheel completely? Just end the game? Make it so that no one has any chance at progressing passed just beating the campaign and getting their best gear? Why?
In what world would that make sense or be preferable to how things are? Why can't these kids comprehend that in ANY game like this the people who spend craptons of hours into it are gonna have more and go further than those who don't? What's unfair about that? When you watch sports do you ever think "Uck, that's not fair. I want to be on the Yankees but I've never played baseball before! It's not fair that these guys who spend all their time playing baseball get to be on a major team and I as someone who doesn't play baseball don't! We should ban baseball!"
Why are we even putting this much weight on leaderboards? Such a teeeeny, tiny % of the playerbase even ever make it to the leaderboards yet we're willing to nerf, cap and destroy entire relevant aspects of the game that are open to a much larger % of the playerbase to give these kids the feeling that it's "more fair" for them. I've never been on the leaderboards and that's my own fault for not being as good or having the same amount of time to put into the game as those that do.
Do they not realize that removing/nerfing/capping paragons and grifts isn't gonna make it so that they can now magically be #1 on leaderboards? The same guys that spend 12 hours a day or whatever farming paragons and pushing grifts would just spend more time than you farming better gear, find more people to share gear with and get further on the boards than you anyway. Then what do we do? Remove RNG gear? Make all legs/sets have the same base stats? Put a cap on the time anyone can play on any given character? When does it end?
Can't we just make a pretend ladder for these kids and photoshop their names on it or jingle keys in front of their face while the rest of us enjoy the game?
I really, really hope Blizzard doesn't take posts like this seriously. These kind of posts make me worry about the future of the game more so than any inherent in-game flaw.
The best way to fix this system is have gr give you paragon instead of gaining it through exp.
You could have it scale and its more indicative of skill over game time. Still has an infinite scale, and is easier to gain early levels just like early paragon works now.
If you made each gr count as .5 paragon levels rounded up, at GR 100 you would have a few more than 2075 points to spend. That isn't that far off from the TOP players grinding every day in this season. Just seems like a better system to me.
Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?
And after how many playtime hours during a 3 month season do you reach that point? Nobody said anything about capping non-season. So, the super serious sibling gamers might reach that plvl and (almost) BiS equipment in a week. What's the matter? Others will reach that point too and then it's up to practice and creativity.
I can turn your Yankees analogy around by pointing out that they get that good via practice. It's not like they're getting bigger bats if they have their little brother run extra laps around the stadium during offtime hours.
If grifts is "competition"...everybody should be the same, as in many pvp games.
same gear and stats, then it's everything up to your skills, builds strategy and team.
ok a "tutorial" of 20-50hrs and then start the real endgame. but here there is no endgame and just increasing numbers disguised as endgame, without any form of fun.
It's just AI botting..or human botting, as you simply do the same thing like a robot.
even loot hunting is repetitive, but it's still better than exp...especially if there is a fair/balanced trade and reasonable build variety, not just ONE BiS and ONE cookiecutter build per class.
What to do once you have all BiS?
Do another class...wait for new game mechanics to be introduced? new builds to master? new items or maps?
I agree, plvls is not at a good place right now, it's mainly the only thing keeping players to the game atm, well those few that are competitive, but it's not really helping the game as a whole. if you don't have 10 hours a day to farm, you can't be competitive, it's not possible. You need to be same plvl as those guys, farm grifts 24/7, get those 1% gem upgrades, get those 1% item upgrades. It what makes a HUGE difference in the long run, someone who has a job, likes to play another game too etc has a hard time just making it into the leaderboards cause he isn't playing as much as those players that are farming 24/7. And that shouldn't be the case, you should be able to play half as much as the highest player, and yet be competitive and be able to beat him on leaderboards. But there should also be other factors for the longtivity of the game, but something that isn't as much game changing as it is now.
I just hope Blizzard actually does realize this and adresses this in future patches/expansion.
I'll never for the life of me understand these "WAH! WAH! TAKE AWAY PARAGONS!" kids.
I've literally never heard a one of them come up with a logical reason behind their opinion that didn't essentially come down to, "It's not fair cause people who play way more than others get further in the game". Yet these kids make sooooooo many posts about this crap. As if to make up for their complete lack of reason or rationality they just take to being really loud and insistent.
Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?
You people whine about "feeling like your on an endless wheel" but your solution to that is just to stop the wheel completely? Just end the game? Make it so that no one has any chance at progressing passed just beating the campaign and getting their best gear? Why?
In what world would that make sense or be preferable to how things are? Why can't these kids comprehend that in ANY game like this the people who spend craptons of hours into it are gonna have more and go further than those who don't? What's unfair about that? When you watch sports do you ever think "Uck, that's not fair. I want to be on the Yankees but I've never played baseball before! It's not fair that these guys who spend all their time playing baseball get to be on a major team and I as someone who doesn't play baseball don't! We should ban baseball!"
Why are we even putting this much weight on leaderboards? Such a teeeeny, tiny % of the playerbase even ever make it to the leaderboards yet we're willing to nerf, cap and destroy entire relevant aspects of the game that are open to a much larger % of the playerbase to give these kids the feeling that it's "more fair" for them. I've never been on the leaderboards and that's my own fault for not being as good or having the same amount of time to put into the game as those that do.
Do they not realize that removing/nerfing/capping paragons and grifts isn't gonna make it so that they can now magically be #1 on leaderboards? The same guys that spend 12 hours a day or whatever farming paragons and pushing grifts would just spend more time than you farming better gear, find more people to share gear with and get further on the boards than you anyway. Then what do we do? Remove RNG gear? Make all legs/sets have the same base stats? Put a cap on the time anyone can play on any given character? When does it end?
Can't we just make a pretend ladder for these kids and photoshop their names on it or jingle keys in front of their face while the rest of us enjoy the game?
I really, really hope Blizzard doesn't take posts like this seriously. These kind of posts make me worry about the future of the game more so than any inherent in-game flaw.
Have you even taken the time to read any of the posts in this thread?
There's plenty of logical reasons as to why people are unhappy with the end game being a mindless xp speed farm.
Do you know the current state of end game requires you to drop the difficulty and speed farm easier content to increase your Paragon levels?
It doesn't make any sense to me when you say only a tiny portion of the player base reaches the leader boards so people should stop complaining about the fact they can't compete. Why even have leaderboards then? What is the purpose of giving the 1% of people who can actually get on the leaderboards a leaderboard?
Why implement a system that at its very core forces players to BOT to achieve a spot on said leaderboards?
The new augmentation of acients should help to alleviate the initial need for Paragon grinding but there will still come a point when PL will be your ultimate end game. Which to me doesn't make sense in a game that is supposedly all about the gear.
Imo, while the difference shouldn't be no 10-15x faster in MP, it should be at, the VERY least, 5x faster to do MP then to do SP, for all things.
So much stupid self-entitlement in this thread that has absolutely no basis or explanations. Theres a few wise posters, but most people are coming across as self-entitled pricks, of the same vein of people who live on welfare.
_ I like the idea of Paragon be infinite (10K + if possible). I can not play several hours, but I try to have fun every min/ hour. Paragon is one of the things that attracts me in the game. If you take that away, will get to other games that already exists or will exist (annoying all the same, he reached a maximum level if farm items that only drop if you have "very very very lucky" or play 6 hours or more per day,...)
_ Who thinks impose "heavy restrictions" in the Paragon system, will help are mistaken, will worsen, more people will stop playing because it is "more of the same".
_ Let infinite Paragon!
_ Solution:
* Two types of GRift:
1 - GRift with unlimited Paragon without avail to Rank only farm exp, items, "up" gem;
2 - GRift limited at level 1000 Paragon, as quote above. One for those who wish to reach Rank;
- Adjust consistently the Sets of classes. The PTR is possible to see which class will have more or less "chance" in GRift in group and solo. Change the buff, status,... is easy. The team at Blizzard can find alternatives to leave all classes "similar" in relation to efficiency in GRift, Rift and "hunts"" without changing the characteristics of each class (off topic - Better Cruzader *-*)
- Sets in patch 2.4, accompanying the feedback from players and make changes week to week to create more effective Build options;
- Launch more classes. This option will allow to create even more diversity in the game. Even DLC;
- Place decent PVP (many player would spend hours,...);
- Remove exp bonus when playing in groups. The group has the option to go higher GRift ground that, because of the damage and supporting skill which increases the chance of leveling gems. It has better % drop. Who likes to play solo will not suffer as much impact and will balance out to every player;
-------- With the above description, will only claim those unaware to farm exp and items, and do not want to learn;
- If you want to play a game and not have to farm exp or items, will play Heroes of the Storm (know it has exp, but it will not influence who is stronger....) or Overwatch;
* To complete:
_ Tell me three games that is RPG (JRPG,...), I have exp, drop items, has no monthly fee, no cash items, which a player can play one hour a day and will be able to compete against those plays six hours per day, to achieve Rank (such as GRift)?
-------- The answer you know....
* Let's have fun and get healthy alternatives for all and not just those who only complain thinking of something without evaluating others.
I'll never for the life of me understand these "WAH! WAH! TAKE AWAY PARAGONS!" kids.
I've literally never heard a one of them come up with a logical reason behind their opinion that didn't essentially come down to, "It's not fair cause people who play way more than others get further in the game". Yet these kids make sooooooo many posts about this crap. As if to make up for their complete lack of reason or rationality they just take to being really loud and insistent.
Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?
You people whine about "feeling like your on an endless wheel" but your solution to that is just to stop the wheel completely? Just end the game? Make it so that no one has any chance at progressing passed just beating the campaign and getting their best gear? Why?
In what world would that make sense or be preferable to how things are? Why can't these kids comprehend that in ANY game like this the people who spend craptons of hours into it are gonna have more and go further than those who don't? What's unfair about that? When you watch sports do you ever think "Uck, that's not fair. I want to be on the Yankees but I've never played baseball before! It's not fair that these guys who spend all their time playing baseball get to be on a major team and I as someone who doesn't play baseball don't! We should ban baseball!"
Why are we even putting this much weight on leaderboards? Such a teeeeny, tiny % of the playerbase even ever make it to the leaderboards yet we're willing to nerf, cap and destroy entire relevant aspects of the game that are open to a much larger % of the playerbase to give these kids the feeling that it's "more fair" for them. I've never been on the leaderboards and that's my own fault for not being as good or having the same amount of time to put into the game as those that do.
Do they not realize that removing/nerfing/capping paragons and grifts isn't gonna make it so that they can now magically be #1 on leaderboards? The same guys that spend 12 hours a day or whatever farming paragons and pushing grifts would just spend more time than you farming better gear, find more people to share gear with and get further on the boards than you anyway. Then what do we do? Remove RNG gear? Make all legs/sets have the same base stats? Put a cap on the time anyone can play on any given character? When does it end?
Can't we just make a pretend ladder for these kids and photoshop their names on it or jingle keys in front of their face while the rest of us enjoy the game?
I really, really hope Blizzard doesn't take posts like this seriously. These kind of posts make me worry about the future of the game more so than any inherent in-game flaw.
Have you even taken the time to read any of the posts in this thread?
There's plenty of logical reasons as to why people are unhappy with the end game being a mindless xp speed farm.
Do you know the current state of end game requires you to drop the difficulty and speed farm easier content to increase your Paragon levels?
It doesn't make any sense to me when you say only a tiny portion of the player base reaches the leader boards so people should stop complaining about the fact they can't compete. Why even have leaderboards then? What is the purpose of giving the 1% of people who can actually get on the leaderboards a leaderboard?
Why implement a system that at its very core forces players to BOT to achieve a spot on said leaderboards?
The new augmentation of acients should help to alleviate the initial need for Paragon grinding but there will still come a point when PL will be your ultimate end game. Which to me doesn't make sense in a game that is supposedly all about the gear.
lol....are you for real?man you got it all wrong...if no para farming you will never get on leaderboards.and why should you be on leaderboards if you have no time to play...i mean cmon man if you had time to play your idee would sound stupid even for you.its like this: if you play you will get gear, high para and a place on leaderboard.you play less or you get allmost nothing because (pay attention) you cant get something from nothing.so pls stop your QQ and play more or just hire someone to play for you if you dont have time play.
And by the way, I've spent at least a few thousand hours playing D3, reached the leaderboards in 2 of the 4 seasons, and will continue to play the game, even in its broken state.
I've been a fan of the diablo franchise for as long as I can remember and have very fond memories of playing D1 and D2.
The simple fact remains though, that Paragon leveling is mindless, easy and an absolute requirement to be on the leaderboards. It requires zero skill.
I understand that the vast majority of players don't focalize their displeasures, and that the "loud minority" are the ones on the forum complaining, but how in the world is Blizzard supposed to address the issues if they don't know why people are leaving?
There's a reason this "loud minority" is being heard. They see an issue, that not only they, but the others they play with are experiencing and voice their opinions on fan sites and the official forums.
Take me for an example. A large portion of the players on my friends list, have left this season because of the xp grind being the end game meta. For other seasons it was exploits that caused them to leave.
When season were announced my friends list became more active than I've ever seen it. People from different games were popping into D3 to get prep'd for the new ladder/season system. And with the season one launch, I swear, out of the 100 people I have on it, 99 of them were on at any given time.
Then the exploit was found, which clearly gave people a large advantage PL wise. So, people started dropping off almost immediately, because those who found it, decided to keep it "close to the chest" until they got a clear and distinctive advantage over others, again PL wise. And since the ability to compete was thrown out the window, the started to leave.
It's clear to me, even though it's just a small personal sample size, that a lot of people, even if it's the "loud minority", are unhappy with the PL meta.
Give the majority the ability to compete and more people will play and invest more time, for longer periods into the game.
Would I be overly pleased if I sank 500 hours into a season and some dude who only sank 250 into the game, ended up higher than me on the leaderboards? I probably wouldn't, unless of course it was because his RNG was better than mine and he just so happened to outgear me.
Once again, IMO, they need to put more focus on gear and less on a life investment.
History recap:
Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.
In D2 LoD exp progression was faster and many players reached the lvl cap of 99 and thus the point to complain about no more progress for sessions without an item upgrad.
WoW was in between and introduced an easy to reach and mandatory lvl cap.
Then D3V had its similar lvl cap and even more people complained about no progress for spending hours of gameplay, thus we got paragons. But even they were capped, so again yadda yadda..
Fast forward to today, seasonal leaderboards are lacking because of the massive power difference that a plvl gap brings with it. Blizz technically has no choice but to either give it a hard cap (maybe restricted to GRs) or massively reduce the stat gains to get into a D2V situation, like giving 1 strength per 20 plvls past 800. Which would be a mix between a middle finger and avoiding complaints about "being done".
Won't fix anything with a different xp distribution, sane people will always be hundreds of plvl behind the top.
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Your point with the loud minority (or vocal minority, what it's more commonly called) is absolutely correct. But in the end, we (those who are complaining about paragon) have to acknowledge that we're not the main target audience for Blizzard anymore. They have to make a choice: do they want to cater the game to people that sink 99% of their video game time into just one game, and do so for hundreds or even thousands of hours every season? Or do they want to target the casual players that play any given game for a few hours here and there, and switch between games all the time?
I myself had hopes that Diablo became the first, because I don't want to play anything else. I tried a lot of game since I took a break from D3 a few weeks ago, but nothing interests me. Diablo, however, in its current form does not offer the long-term item hunt that some of its predecessors had (e.g., hunting that elusive King's Staff of Haste in Diablo 1!). If they were to cater Diablo to that style of gameplay, they might end up like so many other games - a loyal fanbase that plays the game religiously, but is very sensitive to changes (the re-spec potion in Diablo 2 was met with a lot of criticism by the die hard fans). And a very limited fanbase of probably a few hundred thousand people. The casual game experience of Diablo 3 as in patch 2.3 offers probably some of the most enjoyable short-time burst enjoyment of any ARPG ever in the history of gaming. I personally think, however, that most people are done with it in 100 hours (if played efficiently) or maybe 2-3 more than that if you play very very slowly and "inefficient".
This topic isn't new to me. I've made this case about about 3.5 ago. Actually, I voiced it even a month before that - and the reception was lukewarm. It's the same with trials or other changes in the game: The developers go through several stages. It's always the same: 1) Onset: Problem surfaces. 2) Ignorance: Problem is ignored, also due to lack of community's backing. 3) Trivialization: Problem is debated, is it really a problem and is it really relevant? 4) Denial: The problem is accepted, but the "easy" solutions are denied for various reasons (technical, gameplay, time, resources, ...). 5) Solution: The problem is being dealt with - either 5a) through the "easy" community's solution (e.g., trials) which makes you wonder why it took so long, or 5b) through a more elaborate solution (e.g., loot 2.0). I'd call 5b) the "Blizzard way" - they never want to go for the easy way. Take for example the buff bar - imagine they had just extended it to 20+ icons, you'd have to constantly look at those 20 icons to find out whether or not Focus and Restraint is up (and which one exactly). The new system is much smarter.
With paragon they were in between stages 2-3 before Blizzcon (I can't recall them talking about this before in-depth, they briefly mentioned it), and are now in between stages 3 and 4 (Wyatt's interview quin was very telling in that regard). His answer hints that they're going for another 5b) here, as he said the want to make paragon levels just something you gather "along the way", but what Quin referred to was the more important issue that paragon levels are too strong (Wyatt only addressed that paragon levels are boring to farm). However, as some people pointed out, the legendary augmentation might inflate main stats so much that augmentation might actually be a new 5b) type solution. I don't think so, but we'll see.
In any case - for me neither of that (farming 2000 paragon levels, or farming for 13 gem of 80+ for augmentation) is a desirable endgame goal. I want Diablo to be about the item hunt. I want to hunt my King's Staff of Haste again. Yes, not getting an ancient Serpent's Sparker ruined the fun in Season 3 for me. But I still kept playing for a long time. Getting all ancient weapons (thanks to the cube) in the first week ruined Season 4 for me, however - to an extent where I stopped playing. But I have accepted that I'm the minority (and apparently the vocal one), but so be it. I'll enjoy the game from time to time when new changes arrive, and see if it ever takes a different turn.
just make pl a QoL improvement to satisfy hardcore/nolifers: put a cap to it, with a very low and unconvenient curve of growth of the char or even remove that progression in grift directly tied to exp...like level 99 in poe. -where level counts and is a demonstration of dedition and effort but most part of builds just need 80lvl to function, then it matter of gear and skill.
give back dignity to the loot hunt: trade, intelligent droprates not too grindy and intrusive, variety in gear sets and builds and classes.
d3 has population,fans and trademark, server, devs and money to make THE game to rewrite the story of arpgs...instead of leaving it agonisizing in boring grifts, botting, meaningless pl.
please, do it, rise to glory
--- Kev ---
One of the most common complaints I've seen about Paragon lvls is, mainly, the lvling portion - The fact that it is essentially a slog of speed running GRs. Imo, blizzard DOES need to rebalance the amount of XP given by GRs to the rest of the game - Currently, no matter what, a GR gives a significantly larger amount of XP in comparision to any other content of the same level. Imo, the bonus XP provided by torment levels SHOULD be equivalent to the amount of bonus XP provided in a GR of equivalent level. In addition, just go ahead and open Torment levels all the way to 20 (Which should be roughly equivalent to GR 95 or so)
These two changes will bring Bounties and GRs closer to each other in terms of XP gain - GRs will still have the edge due to the large xp on completion and the higher mob density, but Bounties will be closer behind due to the quest turn ins.
In addition, increase the mob density of Rifts to be equivalent to that of GRs. Also, give more incentives to finish a Rift - Imo, giving each kill a very small chance to summon an additional Rift Guardian would be fine, to the point that on average you will get 1 extra RG per Rift, but RNG could give you 20 extra RGs in a Rift.
Doing these will take Paragon levels from "something you have to grind through" to "something you acquire while playing the game" as ALL activities will provide a similar amount of XP, thus no matter what you choose to do, you get good XP, rather then "Farm Rifts for keys on the most efficient-per-keystone difficult, farm speed GRs for XP"
Still does not change the fact that groups will be 3-4 times higher than solo players, when in reality it should only be 2 times higher at most.
I still argue that 20-40% is the most logical, aka 2-4 players * 10%. And lets be real, even if there is a nerf to xp gains, in the end it will not be enough without a 800 paragon cap for in seasons only.
I disagree with this thought completely, as 100 paragon levels will still mean a 5-6 GR difference when pushing ladders.
Honestly, there is two possible solutions to the huge gap.
A - Paragon cap at 800 (In season only!)
B - Completely rework how paragon and experience gains work.
Either way, we see the gap shrink, and once that gap shrinks, we will see diversity and parody on the ladders, really making D3 reach the level of greatness it has the potential to do.
In Vanilla? Which class? 20 Whirlwind and 20 Spear Mastery, done
My only ever 99 char was a hybrid-pvp-pala in LoD who could use every single point and more, but again, vanilla?
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I think the best idea presented is the ony with PL cap in grifts only. Plvl of 800 is not that hard to obtain, and that would allow people who go to school/have a job to compete on the leaderboards if they have the skill and items needed to do so. And still gaining exp would be rewarded, just not in grifts.
I'll never for the life of me understand these "WAH! WAH! TAKE AWAY PARAGONS!" kids.
I've literally never heard a one of them come up with a logical reason behind their opinion that didn't essentially come down to, "It's not fair cause people who play way more than others get further in the game". Yet these kids make sooooooo many posts about this crap. As if to make up for their complete lack of reason or rationality they just take to being really loud and insistent.
Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?
You people whine about "feeling like your on an endless wheel" but your solution to that is just to stop the wheel completely? Just end the game? Make it so that no one has any chance at progressing passed just beating the campaign and getting their best gear? Why?
In what world would that make sense or be preferable to how things are? Why can't these kids comprehend that in ANY game like this the people who spend craptons of hours into it are gonna have more and go further than those who don't? What's unfair about that? When you watch sports do you ever think "Uck, that's not fair. I want to be on the Yankees but I've never played baseball before! It's not fair that these guys who spend all their time playing baseball get to be on a major team and I as someone who doesn't play baseball don't! We should ban baseball!"
Why are we even putting this much weight on leaderboards? Such a teeeeny, tiny % of the playerbase even ever make it to the leaderboards yet we're willing to nerf, cap and destroy entire relevant aspects of the game that are open to a much larger % of the playerbase to give these kids the feeling that it's "more fair" for them. I've never been on the leaderboards and that's my own fault for not being as good or having the same amount of time to put into the game as those that do.
Do they not realize that removing/nerfing/capping paragons and grifts isn't gonna make it so that they can now magically be #1 on leaderboards? The same guys that spend 12 hours a day or whatever farming paragons and pushing grifts would just spend more time than you farming better gear, find more people to share gear with and get further on the boards than you anyway. Then what do we do? Remove RNG gear? Make all legs/sets have the same base stats? Put a cap on the time anyone can play on any given character? When does it end?
Can't we just make a pretend ladder for these kids and photoshop their names on it or jingle keys in front of their face while the rest of us enjoy the game?
I really, really hope Blizzard doesn't take posts like this seriously. These kind of posts make me worry about the future of the game more so than any inherent in-game flaw.
The best way to fix this system is have gr give you paragon instead of gaining it through exp.
You could have it scale and its more indicative of skill over game time. Still has an infinite scale, and is easier to gain early levels just like early paragon works now.
If you made each gr count as .5 paragon levels rounded up, at GR 100 you would have a few more than 2075 points to spend. That isn't that far off from the TOP players grinding every day in this season. Just seems like a better system to me.
And after how many playtime hours during a 3 month season do you reach that point? Nobody said anything about capping non-season. So, the super serious sibling gamers might reach that plvl and (almost) BiS equipment in a week. What's the matter? Others will reach that point too and then it's up to practice and creativity.
I can turn your Yankees analogy around by pointing out that they get that good via practice. It's not like they're getting bigger bats if they have their little brother run extra laps around the stadium during offtime hours.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
If grifts is "competition"...everybody should be the same, as in many pvp games.
same gear and stats, then it's everything up to your skills, builds strategy and team.
ok a "tutorial" of 20-50hrs and then start the real endgame. but here there is no endgame and just increasing numbers disguised as endgame, without any form of fun.
It's just AI botting..or human botting, as you simply do the same thing like a robot.
even loot hunting is repetitive, but it's still better than exp...especially if there is a fair/balanced trade and reasonable build variety, not just ONE BiS and ONE cookiecutter build per class.
What to do once you have all BiS?
Do another class...wait for new game mechanics to be introduced? new builds to master? new items or maps?
like in poe.
endless exp is not longevity.
--- Kev ---
I agree, plvls is not at a good place right now, it's mainly the only thing keeping players to the game atm, well those few that are competitive, but it's not really helping the game as a whole. if you don't have 10 hours a day to farm, you can't be competitive, it's not possible. You need to be same plvl as those guys, farm grifts 24/7, get those 1% gem upgrades, get those 1% item upgrades. It what makes a HUGE difference in the long run, someone who has a job, likes to play another game too etc has a hard time just making it into the leaderboards cause he isn't playing as much as those players that are farming 24/7. And that shouldn't be the case, you should be able to play half as much as the highest player, and yet be competitive and be able to beat him on leaderboards. But there should also be other factors for the longtivity of the game, but something that isn't as much game changing as it is now.
I just hope Blizzard actually does realize this and adresses this in future patches/expansion.
Have you even taken the time to read any of the posts in this thread?
There's plenty of logical reasons as to why people are unhappy with the end game being a mindless xp speed farm.
Do you know the current state of end game requires you to drop the difficulty and speed farm easier content to increase your Paragon levels?
It doesn't make any sense to me when you say only a tiny portion of the player base reaches the leader boards so people should stop complaining about the fact they can't compete. Why even have leaderboards then? What is the purpose of giving the 1% of people who can actually get on the leaderboards a leaderboard?
Why implement a system that at its very core forces players to BOT to achieve a spot on said leaderboards?
The new augmentation of acients should help to alleviate the initial need for Paragon grinding but there will still come a point when PL will be your ultimate end game. Which to me doesn't make sense in a game that is supposedly all about the gear.
Wow. Such self-ownage
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_ I like the idea of Paragon be infinite (10K + if possible). I can not play several hours, but I try to have fun every min/ hour. Paragon is one of the things that attracts me in the game. If you take that away, will get to other games that already exists or will exist (annoying all the same, he reached a maximum level if farm items that only drop if you have "very very very lucky" or play 6 hours or more per day,...)
_ Who thinks impose "heavy restrictions" in the Paragon system, will help are mistaken, will worsen, more people will stop playing because it is "more of the same".
_ Let infinite Paragon!
_ Solution:
* Two types of GRift:
1 - GRift with unlimited Paragon without avail to Rank only farm exp, items, "up" gem;
2 - GRift limited at level 1000 Paragon, as quote above. One for those who wish to reach Rank;
- Adjust consistently the Sets of classes. The PTR is possible to see which class will have more or less "chance" in GRift in group and solo. Change the buff, status,... is easy. The team at Blizzard can find alternatives to leave all classes "similar" in relation to efficiency in GRift, Rift and "hunts"" without changing the characteristics of each class (off topic - Better Cruzader *-*)
- Sets in patch 2.4, accompanying the feedback from players and make changes week to week to create more effective Build options;
- Launch more classes. This option will allow to create even more diversity in the game. Even DLC;
- Place decent PVP (many player would spend hours,...);
- Remove exp bonus when playing in groups. The group has the option to go higher GRift ground that, because of the damage and supporting skill which increases the chance of leveling gems. It has better % drop. Who likes to play solo will not suffer as much impact and will balance out to every player;
-------- With the above description, will only claim those unaware to farm exp and items, and do not want to learn;
- If you want to play a game and not have to farm exp or items, will play Heroes of the Storm (know it has exp, but it will not influence who is stronger....) or Overwatch;
* To complete:
_ Tell me three games that is RPG (JRPG,...), I have exp, drop items, has no monthly fee, no cash items, which a player can play one hour a day and will be able to compete against those plays six hours per day, to achieve Rank (such as GRift)?
-------- The answer you know....
* Let's have fun and get healthy alternatives for all and not just those who only complain thinking of something without evaluating others.
I am for real man.
And by the way, I've spent at least a few thousand hours playing D3, reached the leaderboards in 2 of the 4 seasons, and will continue to play the game, even in its broken state.
I've been a fan of the diablo franchise for as long as I can remember and have very fond memories of playing D1 and D2.
The simple fact remains though, that Paragon leveling is mindless, easy and an absolute requirement to be on the leaderboards. It requires zero skill.