101 replies to this topic

[FistOfZakarum]

HELLO!?

They never said anything about DECREASING difficulty, where are people getting this idiotic notion from?

They said they're INCREASING the difficulty on Acts 3 and 4 to make it an ELITE level.

TL;DR You can't satisfy everyone. Might as well stop arguing with the fools that think this is a bad change.


Let's put it this way. Would you rather have the Skeleton King and the LORD OF TERROR have the exact same difficulty? No.

[FistOfZakarum]

Shrieker, on 30 March 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

Bogatog, on 30 March 2012 - 11:47 PM, said:

Fair enough, the amount of gear you'll get in a run through probably won't be sufficient to have a huge impact on the difficulty on a single run through.

I'm still not convinced that the overall level of difficulty in inferno has increased or decreased.  All we know is that Acts 3 and 4 are more difficult than 1 and 2 right now.  Maybe they tweaked it to be harder and then decided it was too hard for the whole game, but wanted the end to be even more difficult than originally planned.  

Personally, I was fine with the static difficulty and was a fan of it as well. But I actually prefer the later acts to be more difficult.

Hopefully you're right about not being sure if the difficulty is increased or decreased.
Sorry for quoting this again but:
We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.

The "that" does in my opinion confirm that the other acts was as hard as the last act is now, but they've been decreased.

This is stupid logic. They never said a decrease, all I read is that they made Acts 3 and 4 now BRUTALLY hard. AKA, they wanted to increase the difficulty even more to  give a ladder effect on the progressing acts difficulty.

Let's remember. All monster in inferno are 61+. How would they lower the monster level in acts 1 to make it harder than hell if they had to go to level 60 or lower for inferno. Doesn't make sense.

I approve the change, haters gonna hate.

See you at release lol.

[Yngvar]

Hmm. I'd like to see them at least include an unlockable option after finishing Inferno, where you can enable the max level monsters throughout all acts. I was kind of excited about that feature, and I'm a bit sad to see it go away.

[Ocean]

Official Blizzard Quote:

Gunna hold you to your word on this. Literally weeks before anyone in the world beats Act 1 Inferno.
Ok, ok, well I don't underestimate our players, potentially not weeks for Act 1. I'd bet on weeks for Act 2, though.

Weeks? I doubt it. I'll get that done quickly enough

[Kashim]

First reaction is very shocked. Extremely disappointed that the first 2 acts won't be as good.

I really hope in the future once you complete Act 4 on Inferno you can hit a switch in the UI before making a game that sets everything equal. I was so looking forward to not having to see the same environments over and over again. After having said goodbye to those days, I'm forced to go there again =(
I understand their reasoning and agree with it, but especially Act 2 areas look so cool I could see myself venturing there for some sessions to farm.

Oh well. I suppose any future Acts that come out with future expansions will be together with 3 4 and Inferno. But dang, really blows.

[pikke]

Thanks for the update Molster!

It's fun to read across all these posts and see many different reactions.

I should send a "thank you for your hard job" card to Blizzard staff, keeping so many people happy sure is an impossible job, still they manage it quite well.

[Nerax]

I'm very happy they finally got around to realize a flat difficulty was a bad idea, the initial brick wall would only have held for so long. Once broken inferno would quickly have become boringly unchallenging (unless they watered down inferno gear to be mostly visual upgrades). Heres to hopping they make act 4 very difficult even with top notch inferno gear! This way there will be a PvE challenge for many months  to come. As long as gear doesn't scale to fast in inferno, the earlier acts will be worthwhile farming thanks to the faster kill rate, giving a nice and mixed farming gameplay.

[Vagelis4VP]

well, "Kashim" nailed it.... thats what i was thinking too...
yes, the increase difficulty in inferno does make sense... this is how it would "normal" be...
but it has its downside also...
now, all people who farm inferno, while it would be a challenge to get to the final fights... it will get repetitive after, because the farming will be focused only in acts III and iV... and thats not a good thing...
instead of having a variety of places to visit, fight, and farm, now u will be restricted only to the acts which give out the best loot...
the best option i see for this, and i agree with "Kashim" above, is to give u the option to make all acts even in inferno, after u beat it once...

Edited by Vagelis4VP, 31 March 2012 - 07:42 AM.

[lMarcusl]

God. So there are tons of hardcore Diablo fans who are complaining about the game being too damn casual, with not having enough choice and everything being unlocked and chosen for you. Then there are obviously (looking at the questions) tons of casual players who want to make the game even more casual and completely ruin it for everybody else by removing unlocks later on in the game and squeezing everything into normal because THEY won't be playing the other 3/4ths of the game and expect to be given everything immediately when they want it. I'm really starting to emphatise with Blizzard if this is the kind of feedback they have to deal with on a daily basis.

[lMarcusl]

Vagelis4VP, on 31 March 2012 - 07:37 AM, said:

well, "Kashim" nailed it.... thats what i was thinking too...
yes, the increase difficulty in inferno does make sense... this is how it would "normal" be...
but it has its downside also...
now, all people who farm inferno, while it would be a challenge to get to the final fights... it will get repetitive after, because the farming will be focused only in acts III and iV... and thats not a good thing...
instead of having a variety of places to visit, fight, and farm, now u will be restricted only to the acts which give out the best loot...
the best option i see for this, and i agree with "Kashim" above, is to give u the option to make all acts even in inferno, after u beat it once...

I think you're wrong on this point. You have to see the other side of the coin. It's inferno. Stuff will be tougher than you...much much tougher and stronger than anything you ever met. You will never outlevel it. Thus even though you can get potentially the best stuff at the end of inferno, you will potentially be able to make two-three boss runs in Act I inferno by the time you are done with one run in Act IV inferno due to the fact it'll be so hard. The difference in item power won't be so dramatic by that point I think.

[Windex7]

Good change, as long as they didn't nerf act 1 too much and that act 3-4 really are that hard.

[akse]

I like the difficulty change. In D2 pre-LOD i used to go to Flayer Jungle in Hell with WW barb and cruise through it in minutes. The place used to drop as good loot (before they changed the affixes/suffixes levels for Rares) as Act4 but there was so many monsters and they were quite weak compared to Act4 monsters so it was useful and more relaxing to farm there.

I bet there will still be a lot of challenge in all Inferno difficulty Acts and if Act1 and Act2 is not enough for you you can just farm 3 and 4.

[Drachar]

Not huge surprise. There would be very little motivation to progress and see the rest of the game if the difficulty and loot was the same at say Skeleton King in Act1 and end boss of D3 in Act 4 (you know, whole thing about pushing ones limits). Once you had cracked the "skill roof" of Inferno, you could just stay and farm it rather then progressing (and risk spending gold on repair/your hardcore character).

Lets hope they learn from the oddity in D2 Hell difficulty though, and avoid issues such as an Act 1 area having better loot then a Act 4 one (area level thing) and that both loot and difficulty improve roughy at the same rate as you progress through the acts.


Edit:
It is also pretty damn funny of having people who may or may not have seen the first 13 levels of the game rant about "nerfs!" based on testing and feedback done by players who has actually played the content in question.

Edited by Drachar, 31 March 2012 - 09:29 AM.

[pikke]

Drachar, on 31 March 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

It is also pretty damn funny of having people who may or may not have seen the first 13 levels of the game rant about "nerfs!" based on testing and feedback done by players who has actually played the content in question.

Not to mention the many different definitions of what an "hardcore" or a "casual" player is!
Each one of us has his/her own perception of what the requirements are to fall in one of the two categories and often they differ a lot.

[MeddlinG]

I like it...Acts III and IV brutally hard. Looks like fun.

[KalikooJack]

I dont mind that the difficult increases over acts.

I just wish that inferno act 1 would be hard enough that it wouldnt be viable to progress to inferno immediately you beat hell.

And I also wish inferno would be so difficult that it wouldn´t be viable to farm it continously, that ultimately cost of repairs would force you to back off for a while. UNLESS you are uber skilled and geared.

but I think the reality might be different. Now all I can do is wish... See you at the release!

Edited by KalikooJack, 31 March 2012 - 10:38 AM.

[Ocean]

People get disappointed, but once they get to inferno - if they even do - "omg this is so hard, I'm glad they leveled it out" will be everyone's reaction.

[Odin]

Well its just another posting not saying much, because no mentioning of how they are going to increase the difficulty and act 3 + 4 rewards could also drop in act 1 + 2 of inferno which will be easier so whats the point of farming the "really really brutal difficult acts" then?

Blizzard 2 said all enemies will be 61 so I think they'll just add more mobs and throw in maybe more champions but thats about it. I think its so funny whiners complained about Baalruns (simple don't do them?!) now you have basically the same just as inferno act runs.

But hardly surprising I expect them to tweak things a lot even after release.

If Blizzard 2 wants inferno to be really outstanding:

- add champions which only spawn in inferno based on the act difficulty
- add custom states for inferno
- add special abilities which can be learned from fighting mobs in inferno
- give them debuffs that will decrease your stats
- completely randomize the whole inferno acts no linearic handcrafted dungeons

sadly it will come down to:
normal - farm gear - defeat nightmare - farm gear - defeat hell - farm gear longer - defeat inferno act 1 - farm gear even longer - defeat act 2 - farm gear - defeact act 3 ...

Edited by Odin, 31 March 2012 - 11:25 AM.

[Scyldragon]

FistOfZakarum, on 31 March 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

HELLO!?

They never said anything about DECREASING difficulty, where are people getting this idiotic notion from?

Quote

There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty. So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV). For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno. They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.

Read it again. Clearly states that the beginning of Inferno is easier and more casual-friendly.

FistOfZakarum, on 31 March 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

They said they're INCREASING the difficulty on Acts 3 and 4 to make it an ELITE level.

TL;DR You can't satisfy everyone. Might as well stop arguing with the fools that think this is a bad change.

Let's put it this way. Would you rather have the Skeleton King and the LORD OF TERROR have the exact same difficulty? No.

Quote

Longevity. We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome. We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.

He's not actually saying it's gotten any harder, just that it felt wrong to make all of Inferno as brutally hard as act III and IV. For all we know, the level distribution is now 60/60/61/61.

And yes, being able to farm wherever you want is kinda nice. I guess you didn't play a lot of end-game Diablo 2.

[Zaagazug]

Since we do not know what the base line difficulty was during the internal beta testing of inferno - and what the new base line will be based on the internal feed-back - it is hard to judge whether the change is good or bad.

"They nerfed Act I and II of inferno to accomodate more casual player needs" is an equally true statement compared to "They buffed act III and IV of inferno to accomodate the more hard-core crowd".

It all boils down to the trust and expectations we have on Blizzard. Personally I have been a bit jaded with the direction WoW has taken so if I had to guess I would lean towards the first statement above and not the second (and I would dislike that). But I do not know what they have done of course.

Edited by Zaagazug, 31 March 2012 - 12:09 PM.