This information is WRONG! The experience required per level continues to escalate and there is no cut off! Reaching PL 10,000 will take a while with PC players.
The very first sentence, starting with "UPDATE2:" addresses this, and the very last sentence has a link to the updated information. The information is not wrong, it's simply outdated as clearly indicated by the disclaimer, yet the argument in my opinion still prevails.
You're a fool if you think your experience of the first seasons means something right now...
Can you then tell what's the difference and why I am a fool
Almost everything changed from the first few seasons to now.
Different maps: In S1, it was basically all about getting Silver Spire; in S5, Crater was arguably the best. Even some cave maps (auto-skip in S1-S3) worked out in S5.
Different mobs: Dust Eaters and Cuddle Bears, once the #1 mob type, are really bad now. For solo wizards, Winged Assassins are amazing - a mob type you would avoid like the plague in previous seasons.
Different pylon mechanics: Pylons changed significantly over the past few seasons, in terms of what they do, in terms of how they spawn, and in terms of when to use them (and when not).
Different RGs: In S1+2 the worst RG was Saxtris, which was by far the best in S5.
Different playstyle: From Crusader pulling, over zero dog, perma stun with Tiklandian, and perma RG stun by crus/WD, we know arrived at pulling barbarians. The support meta has changed entirely, different skills, different playstyles.
Twisters: You will need a lot of rifts to know all the corners for stacking Twisters. Unless you do all of that on GR20 rifts for some reason, you *will* be paragon 1000+ before you can really call yourself knowledgeable about the Twister meta.
I've played S1+2 relatively competitively (multiple top 100 rankings) and the knowledge and experience that you can recycle for the S5 meta is almost zero. It was like learning a new game.
So, we get into a discussion of skill? This might be slightly off-topic since it's a thread about paragon. But since it's my thread, and I think distinguishing skill and paragon is important, "I'll allow it". Let's look at the definition of skill (from the OED):
"Capability of accomplishing something with precision and certainty; practical knowledge in combination with ability; cleverness, expertness. Also, an ability to perform a function, acquired or learnt with practice"
So basically, paraphrased: A combination of having knowledge about something and then being able to put this knowledge to use without mistakes.
I am not playing Wizard class [...] Please tell me about the "skills" behind Wizzys rushing into a negative corner and spamming/stacking twisters. Much skills, so wow...
That's very telling. You believe the wizard doesn't require any skill? Just run up to a corner and sure, the Twister will automatically stack? Oh boy, please roll a wizard just for fun and give it a try. You'll be in for a surprise. Here's something you can do: watch a random video of a paragon 3000 wizard, and you'll at least once in their rifts hear "damn why doesn't it stack" and you'll quite a few times in every rift see the wizard reposition himself. I really can't believe that I have to read that Twister stacking does not require skill. Going back to the definition, Twister stacking is absolutely the best example of knowledge+execution, and never before has any spec in D3 required as much skill as Twister, as you literally have to have tried every corner on every map before KNOWING if it works and EXECUTING it without "wasting" Twister casts in a rift. Really, saying the ET wizard doesn't require skill is nothing short of ridiculous.
Tell me about the skills behind Barbs pulling trash mobs
While wizards are about a mix of execution and knowledge, support barbs are 90% about execution. And it's damn hard to play a Raekor support barb really, really well. That encompasses:
Animation cancelling for Furious Charge to move faster
Making sure to scout, pull, and come back to the group all within 10 seconds to re-cast Ignore Pain
Pulling mobs that are CC immune (i.e., on average 19 out of 20 pulls will be resisted)
Watching your resource to not let Aquila Cuirass drop (i.e., switching between FC and Spear)
Constantly pull mobs in to never let the wizard run out of resource, increase area damage and APD procs
Correctly scout for pylons (or do not!)
I *know* all of this. I know how to to all of this. Still, I recognize that my skill for executing these particular things all together in the pressure of a high GR was not as good as that of many other support barbs I've played with. Support barb was easily the most skill-dependent spec in the S5 meta. (WW barb in S6 will be a bit easier.)
Tell me about the skills that Monk has to do by just spamming skills inside twisters
Tell me about the skills that WD (which I personally play last few weeks) has to do by running around to grab globes and just spam Big Bad Voodoo and rest skills inside twisters (do not tell me that frog placement needs skill....)
While monk and WD are definitely way easier to play than wizard+barb, they still require a lot of knowledge and skill. Some of which even high-end groups did not display. For example, an exceptional monk (as opposed to just a very good monk) knows that it's not just about spamming in the middle and constantly hitting all buttons. It's about knowing when to stop pulling to reduce CC immunity. It's about sometimes going out and pull certain mobs AWAY from the Twister so that others can walk IN/be pulled IN (basically "cycling through mobs"). As for the WD, the way you describe the WD you might've benefited from this thread to know that the WD actually can have quite a high skill cap if you want to min-max your actions: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/475u9l/written_guide_tips_for_support_wd_in_season_5/
I really can't stand it if people say "D3 requires no skill" and think they end up 10 below the #1 clear just because of paragons. No, paragon are only half (or maybe even 20-30%) of that. The rest is skill - and skill is a combination of knowledge and execution. So in the end, paragon is an issue, but only for a few hundred (or maybe a few thousand) of players. 99% of the playerbase could easily improve their ranking by 5 GR tiers or more just by playing more SKILLFULLY (i.e., acquire more knowledge and put it to use). One thing I never see popping up and that easily makes a difference of a few tiers is Pylon mechanics... I'm thinking of writing a guide about that since no one seems to know how pylons work. Not sure if anyone would be interested in that.
Anyways, sorry for off-topic, but I had to respond to that. We're discussing paragon here because it got out of hand and is an issue for the very top players as it becomes boring (e.g., it incentivizes no boss runs which are terrible). But for 99% of the playerbase paragon is not an issue, nor any of the changes discussed here would ever affect them.
Starting at post #183, you will find the paragon cap discussion that was previously derailing a different thread. Just for those wondering where all the posts went and why all your posts ended up in this thread ;-)
Regarding the tone of the discussion, it is very borderline, but in my opinion still within the rules (though on the verge of some people getting infracted). I get that some of the claims are strong and against our intuition of how powerful we perceive paragon to be, but that does not give anyone the right to shift the tone to personal insults. Please keep it in line.
Shapookya perfectly explained the math why paragon makes less of a difference than what people think. And Wudijo's final sprint on the leaderboards adds to that example: he had 1300 less paragon, lower augments (probably another 300-400 paragon), lower gem levels (probably about ~10 less on average) - only his gear was just as good (if not better). So altogether, a difference of about 1600-1700 paragon, gem levels and gear probably equaled each other out. His final clear was 4 tiers lower, though he only spent about 200 keys or so on GR88 afaik and 1300 keys on GR92 - with the same amount of keys he would've cleared GR89 for sure, maybe with a bit of luck even GR90. So yes:
Shapookya is right with this sentence: "The difference between someone with P1000 and someone with P3000 are 3 griftlevels, maybe 4."
However, I think most people disagree with this sentence: "Paragon does not make a big difference."
Because when you're pushing for records, 3-4 tiers are the difference of being somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the leaderboards or top 100. On the 4 player leaderboards, it's even the difference between being rank 200 or NUMBER ONE. That is "yuge"!
Still, when you're paragon 1000 you're not just 4 levels below the paragon 3000 "top players". Why is that? Well, for a variety of reasons:
People with higher paragon have played more rifts (that's why they have higher paragon, d'oh). Playing more rifts = more experience; especially in the S5 where knowledge about every corner in every rift was as literally the key as never before.
Higher paragon oftentimes comes with better gear.
Higher paragon players also usually have higher augments (due to having played more rifts and therefore more gem upgrades).
Higher paragon players also have higher gem levels; in S5, maybe only 10-15 higher, previously (due to 1% upgrade runs) even more.
Higher paragon players just make better decisions: What is a good/bad map? Which packs to skip? Is this a good mob type? How do I dodge those mobs? How do I fight the rift guardian?
There's a correlation between higher paragon players and pylon mechanics knowledge. Low paragon players often don't know the mechanics, don't know where/when/how to spawn them (and when not to), and when/for what to use them.
=> TL;DR: Paragon alone does not make as much of a difference as people think, especially in the age of Caldessan's. But having high paragon comes with other perks (mostly experience, skill, and knowledge) that widen the gap. Nevertheless, when discussing paragon changes we should stay objective and stay true to the facts.
Hm... then I missed the instance where Blizzard acknowledged this. The only instance of "paragon" being mentioned by any Blizzard official this summer was when someone asked in the Reddit Q&A if they were to do changes to paragon and the answer was "nope". Doesn't read to me like they understand the issue.
"The situation is so strange: Low-level paragon players are saying "the system is fine, high-level paragon players should get more power". High- level paragon players are saying "the system is flawed, we should not gain *that* much power". Sigh."
Diablo was a loot-based game once. All the top players are now farming GR70+ in "no boss" runs, which means they only kill trash and leave at the RG to maximize paragon. They play Diablo for 24/7 without seeing a single item drop. How is this still Diablo? How can anyone justify this as being good game design? Why is everyone ignoring the issue by putting words into people's mouth or speaking for other people (i.e., "it's okay if those players get this power") when they say themselves it's not okay?
I'm sad that the community as a whole does not recognize the issue, but even more so that Blizzard thinks it's fine.
@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.
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).
Snapshots are only available in-game, I don't think you'll be able to see them on the website.
Yeah, this would actually be interesting. Although it doesn't really help much, it's an obvious result that people who play much are high paragon and people who play much are on top of the leaderboards. It's kind of a nice thing to see for people who go crazy about statistics and numbers (me me me!), but rather irrelevant for the sake of this argument, in my opinion.
As far as I'm aware no one has made that correlation (leaderboards position/paragon) yet. It would be something that the websites that already datamined the leaderboards and its individual players could do; the API in itself does not have support for leaderboards and won't get an update for D3 in the near future (link).
Note that any of such correlation should be done *after* the season/era ends though. I know of many high-paragon players that aren't doing anything but speed greaters until the 2 weeks notice hits - and they'll blow away the leaderboards then. Expect some crazy rift clears once the announcement is there...
The worst thing in this discussion is when people put words in the mouth of high paragon players. This is not something that some low paragon players made up to complain about other people playing more and gaining more. This is about high paragon players being dissatisfied and fed up with the current system. If you are world paragon #1, there is no one to be jealous of. Yet, both Vajet (combined paragon #1) and Ryu (current paragon #1) in their interviews said that this system is flawed:
(Their criticism of the current system can be found if you scroll down in both interviews, answers to the last question.)
The situation is so strange: Low-level paragon players are saying "the system is fine, high-level paragon players should get more power". High- level paragon players are saying "the system is flawed, we should not gain *that* much power". Sigh.
It's interesting how many low paragon people accuse me of being jealous of high paragon players, call this "whining", or talk about solo vs group or botting issues. None of this has anything to do with this thread.
The people complaining about this are the people that *are* that high paragon. Empyrian said it on stream yesterday. Gabynator wrote it on Empyrian's Twitch chat. I think both raised this concern on the official forums/Reddit. And many other high paragon players (who might not be as popular or well-known) have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current system. Actually, RasAlgethi here in this thread is world paragon #282, on his server paragon top 100. Yet, he doesn't like the system either, see post #25.
At paragon 800, it looked fine. But once I got close to paragon 1000 I realized how stupid and boring it is. I could be happy over the 1000 more main stat I have - but I'm not. Instead I feel that the only thing I have to increase my character's power is paragon. This is supposed to be a loot-based game, but it turned into a paragon-based game.
Good point, botters would be the bane of this. Tho then again, balancing content for bots is something you'd never want to resort to :/
You wouldn't balance the game for bots, you would just acknowledge a problem you can't solve. There are already high-profile players that are at the top of the leaderboards that have (accidentally?) admitted botting, and every well-informed top player will confirm that botting is currently quite an increasing issue and will be rampant in 2.3 (to a point where non-botting players will fall behind). You have three choices:
1) Forfeit and let the bots win. Want to get to the top of the leaderboards? Get a bot, or even worse buy several accounts with bots. I think we don't want this, right?
2) Ban all bots. Obviously the best solution - unfortunately impossible. While popular bot software has detectable patterns and I'm quite sure we'll see a banwave at the end of this season, it's still an issue that those accounts are up there on the leaderboards for so long; many of them will even survive the banwave, as history has proven; and since there's a reset at season anyways, they can just re-start in S4 - like everyone else. Plus, in addition to bots there is much more powerful software out there, but only accessible to a very small circle of top players, and that will be undetected.
3) Therefore, a third and in my opinion is just to create a system that does de-incentivize botting. That means addressing the paragon issues highlighted in this thread, as well as the fact that you can grab bounty caches without actually contributing to the bounty clears.
Usually those issues stay in the game for one more season after they've been known. Like the trial system, which was known to be an issue after S2, but Blizzard decided to apply the fixes (the system we see now was suggested in verbatim about 8 months ago multiple times) only after letting it trouble the D3 community another season. Which means, S5 might see those issues addressed, but S4/era 4 might be the bot/paragon festival. And I'd like to avoid that at all cost (because I'm out for that season then).
I've played S1+2 relatively competitively (multiple top 100 rankings) and the knowledge and experience that you can recycle for the S5 meta is almost zero. It was like learning a new game.
So, we get into a discussion of skill? This might be slightly off-topic since it's a thread about paragon. But since it's my thread, and I think distinguishing skill and paragon is important, "I'll allow it". Let's look at the definition of skill (from the OED):
"Capability of accomplishing something with precision and certainty; practical knowledge in combination with ability; cleverness, expertness. Also, an ability to perform a function, acquired or learnt with practice"
So basically, paraphrased: A combination of having knowledge about something and then being able to put this knowledge to use without mistakes.
That's very telling. You believe the wizard doesn't require any skill? Just run up to a corner and sure, the Twister will automatically stack? Oh boy, please roll a wizard just for fun and give it a try. You'll be in for a surprise. Here's something you can do: watch a random video of a paragon 3000 wizard, and you'll at least once in their rifts hear "damn why doesn't it stack" and you'll quite a few times in every rift see the wizard reposition himself. I really can't believe that I have to read that Twister stacking does not require skill. Going back to the definition, Twister stacking is absolutely the best example of knowledge+execution, and never before has any spec in D3 required as much skill as Twister, as you literally have to have tried every corner on every map before KNOWING if it works and EXECUTING it without "wasting" Twister casts in a rift. Really, saying the ET wizard doesn't require skill is nothing short of ridiculous.
While wizards are about a mix of execution and knowledge, support barbs are 90% about execution. And it's damn hard to play a Raekor support barb really, really well. That encompasses:
I *know* all of this. I know how to to all of this. Still, I recognize that my skill for executing these particular things all together in the pressure of a high GR was not as good as that of many other support barbs I've played with. Support barb was easily the most skill-dependent spec in the S5 meta. (WW barb in S6 will be a bit easier.)
While monk and WD are definitely way easier to play than wizard+barb, they still require a lot of knowledge and skill. Some of which even high-end groups did not display. For example, an exceptional monk (as opposed to just a very good monk) knows that it's not just about spamming in the middle and constantly hitting all buttons. It's about knowing when to stop pulling to reduce CC immunity. It's about sometimes going out and pull certain mobs AWAY from the Twister so that others can walk IN/be pulled IN (basically "cycling through mobs"). As for the WD, the way you describe the WD you might've benefited from this thread to know that the WD actually can have quite a high skill cap if you want to min-max your actions: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/475u9l/written_guide_tips_for_support_wd_in_season_5/
I really can't stand it if people say "D3 requires no skill" and think they end up 10 below the #1 clear just because of paragons. No, paragon are only half (or maybe even 20-30%) of that. The rest is skill - and skill is a combination of knowledge and execution. So in the end, paragon is an issue, but only for a few hundred (or maybe a few thousand) of players. 99% of the playerbase could easily improve their ranking by 5 GR tiers or more just by playing more SKILLFULLY (i.e., acquire more knowledge and put it to use). One thing I never see popping up and that easily makes a difference of a few tiers is Pylon mechanics... I'm thinking of writing a guide about that since no one seems to know how pylons work. Not sure if anyone would be interested in that.
Anyways, sorry for off-topic, but I had to respond to that. We're discussing paragon here because it got out of hand and is an issue for the very top players as it becomes boring (e.g., it incentivizes no boss runs which are terrible). But for 99% of the playerbase paragon is not an issue, nor any of the changes discussed here would ever affect them.
Starting at post #183, you will find the paragon cap discussion that was previously derailing a different thread. Just for those wondering where all the posts went and why all your posts ended up in this thread ;-)
Regarding the tone of the discussion, it is very borderline, but in my opinion still within the rules (though on the verge of some people getting infracted). I get that some of the claims are strong and against our intuition of how powerful we perceive paragon to be, but that does not give anyone the right to shift the tone to personal insults. Please keep it in line.
Shapookya perfectly explained the math why paragon makes less of a difference than what people think. And Wudijo's final sprint on the leaderboards adds to that example: he had 1300 less paragon, lower augments (probably another 300-400 paragon), lower gem levels (probably about ~10 less on average) - only his gear was just as good (if not better). So altogether, a difference of about 1600-1700 paragon, gem levels and gear probably equaled each other out. His final clear was 4 tiers lower, though he only spent about 200 keys or so on GR88 afaik and 1300 keys on GR92 - with the same amount of keys he would've cleared GR89 for sure, maybe with a bit of luck even GR90. So yes:
Shapookya is right with this sentence: "The difference between someone with P1000 and someone with P3000 are 3 griftlevels, maybe 4."
However, I think most people disagree with this sentence: "Paragon does not make a big difference."
Because when you're pushing for records, 3-4 tiers are the difference of being somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the leaderboards or top 100. On the 4 player leaderboards, it's even the difference between being rank 200 or NUMBER ONE. That is "yuge"!
Still, when you're paragon 1000 you're not just 4 levels below the paragon 3000 "top players". Why is that? Well, for a variety of reasons:
=> TL;DR: Paragon alone does not make as much of a difference as people think, especially in the age of Caldessan's. But having high paragon comes with other perks (mostly experience, skill, and knowledge) that widen the gap. Nevertheless, when discussing paragon changes we should stay objective and stay true to the facts.
Hm... then I missed the instance where Blizzard acknowledged this. The only instance of "paragon" being mentioned by any Blizzard official this summer was when someone asked in the Reddit Q&A if they were to do changes to paragon and the answer was "nope". Doesn't read to me like they understand the issue.
I'll just quote myself:
"The situation is so strange: Low-level paragon players are saying "the system is fine, high-level paragon players should get more power". High- level paragon players are saying "the system is flawed, we should not gain *that* much power". Sigh."
Diablo was a loot-based game once. All the top players are now farming GR70+ in "no boss" runs, which means they only kill trash and leave at the RG to maximize paragon. They play Diablo for 24/7 without seeing a single item drop. How is this still Diablo? How can anyone justify this as being good game design? Why is everyone ignoring the issue by putting words into people's mouth or speaking for other people (i.e., "it's okay if those players get this power") when they say themselves it's not okay?
I'm sad that the community as a whole does not recognize the issue, but even more so that Blizzard thinks it's fine.
@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.
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).
I can only do that if I get the exact data... Don't have that. Or did I miss something?
Snapshots are only available in-game, I don't think you'll be able to see them on the website.
Yeah, this would actually be interesting. Although it doesn't really help much, it's an obvious result that people who play much are high paragon and people who play much are on top of the leaderboards. It's kind of a nice thing to see for people who go crazy about statistics and numbers (me me me!), but rather irrelevant for the sake of this argument, in my opinion.
As far as I'm aware no one has made that correlation (leaderboards position/paragon) yet. It would be something that the websites that already datamined the leaderboards and its individual players could do; the API in itself does not have support for leaderboards and won't get an update for D3 in the near future (link).
Note that any of such correlation should be done *after* the season/era ends though. I know of many high-paragon players that aren't doing anything but speed greaters until the 2 weeks notice hits - and they'll blow away the leaderboards then. Expect some crazy rift clears once the announcement is there...
The worst thing in this discussion is when people put words in the mouth of high paragon players. This is not something that some low paragon players made up to complain about other people playing more and gaining more. This is about high paragon players being dissatisfied and fed up with the current system. If you are world paragon #1, there is no one to be jealous of. Yet, both Vajet (combined paragon #1) and Ryu (current paragon #1) in their interviews said that this system is flawed:
http://www.diablo3ladder.com/news-general-f29/road-paragon-2000-equivalent-and-interview-with-vajet-t1146.html
http://www.diablo3ladder.com/news-diablo-ladder-f21/interview-with-ryuzaki-first-non-season-paragon-2000-t1150.html
(Their criticism of the current system can be found if you scroll down in both interviews, answers to the last question.)
The situation is so strange: Low-level paragon players are saying "the system is fine, high-level paragon players should get more power". High- level paragon players are saying "the system is flawed, we should not gain *that* much power". Sigh.
Empyrian made a very nice video for those who prefer videos - usually Youtube spreads much more, so I'm gonna include that in my first post as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llPluMsxE7M
It's interesting how many low paragon people accuse me of being jealous of high paragon players, call this "whining", or talk about solo vs group or botting issues. None of this has anything to do with this thread.
The people complaining about this are the people that *are* that high paragon. Empyrian said it on stream yesterday. Gabynator wrote it on Empyrian's Twitch chat. I think both raised this concern on the official forums/Reddit. And many other high paragon players (who might not be as popular or well-known) have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current system. Actually, RasAlgethi here in this thread is world paragon #282, on his server paragon top 100. Yet, he doesn't like the system either, see post #25.
At paragon 800, it looked fine. But once I got close to paragon 1000 I realized how stupid and boring it is. I could be happy over the 1000 more main stat I have - but I'm not. Instead I feel that the only thing I have to increase my character's power is paragon. This is supposed to be a loot-based game, but it turned into a paragon-based game.
Please stop with all the accusations. Thanks.
You wouldn't balance the game for bots, you would just acknowledge a problem you can't solve. There are already high-profile players that are at the top of the leaderboards that have (accidentally?) admitted botting, and every well-informed top player will confirm that botting is currently quite an increasing issue and will be rampant in 2.3 (to a point where non-botting players will fall behind). You have three choices:
1) Forfeit and let the bots win. Want to get to the top of the leaderboards? Get a bot, or even worse buy several accounts with bots. I think we don't want this, right?
2) Ban all bots. Obviously the best solution - unfortunately impossible. While popular bot software has detectable patterns and I'm quite sure we'll see a banwave at the end of this season, it's still an issue that those accounts are up there on the leaderboards for so long; many of them will even survive the banwave, as history has proven; and since there's a reset at season anyways, they can just re-start in S4 - like everyone else. Plus, in addition to bots there is much more powerful software out there, but only accessible to a very small circle of top players, and that will be undetected.
3) Therefore, a third and in my opinion is just to create a system that does de-incentivize botting. That means addressing the paragon issues highlighted in this thread, as well as the fact that you can grab bounty caches without actually contributing to the bounty clears.
Usually those issues stay in the game for one more season after they've been known. Like the trial system, which was known to be an issue after S2, but Blizzard decided to apply the fixes (the system we see now was suggested in verbatim about 8 months ago multiple times) only after letting it trouble the D3 community another season. Which means, S5 might see those issues addressed, but S4/era 4 might be the bot/paragon festival. And I'd like to avoid that at all cost (because I'm out for that season then).