@Bagstone: From all con comments I've read until now here, us forums and reddit, the logic of the low paragon player is the following: "I gain 3-4 levels today. I kill mobs faster tomorrow. I get more level. I get more power. I have something to play for." Seems like most of these people don't enjoy experimenting with new chars, setups, builds etc... And I won't blame them. When you know a build is optimal, you don't have to discover it yourself. You just copy it and you farm paragon. And if your only goal is to creep mobs faster, you aren't interested in completing achievements, conquests, pushing leaderboards etc., then you want the current system to stay and you to have fun enjoying it.
So by being unoriginal, you get bored faster? Hmmmm, logic. From your opening statement though, that's EXACTLY what paragon is SUPPOSED to be. You wanna see dedicated players flee the boat? Cap paragon and insert vanity items for playing 12+ hours a day. See how long it lasts.
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.
No, you see 'low level' paragons saying everything is fine. You have high level paragons saying 'I feel like I have to farm to compete.' or "I have to wear a hellfire ring because reason 13234".
I don't really understand the problem that keeps cropping up... All I keep hearing is "It's too powerful to ignore". Agreed. "It's broken" it's doing exactly what it's supposed to.
Also, Vajet's main concern didn't seem like it was paragons or farming them, but that botting and farming rift trials and using support builds sucks. Which ties directly to another issue that keeps cropping up, and that's that support builds allow DPS builds to push higher, but I'll leave that one alone.
You have yet to prove the point you're trying to make. and every single comparison that has been made has been at least 150-1000 paragon level differences. Nonsense basically.
I'll agree that the current mathematical model used is... Do they have one? I agree that it should be altered. However, I regrettably don't feel compelled to change it because of the reward as much as it offends my eyes in that graph format. Burn it already! p0 - How about (x^2)+b? p750 - Let's try (x*m)+b? p2000 - Nah bro, it's just (x+b) now.
I suggest that they normalize the numbers if they're becoming too great and scale monster xp accordingly. Make the whole thing a nice formula and keep total xp below 9 quintillion if the issue is overflow related.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"We", "Everyone" - Argumentum ad populum. "You people" - Argumentum ad hominem. "Your dumb" - Contractionem absum.
And how about we go and look at the actual time investiture difference between whatever arbitrary players we're comparing is between seasons? It does nothing to say players 1 and 60 have larger paragon gaps without also looking at their playtime gaps. Then we have to sit and look at how they reached that paragon (Rubies? Support builds? What are they ACTUALLY doing different). You need extensive and detailed information to make any REAL comparison between season leaderboards.
Valid point, I wanted to at least compare paragon earned against hours played but unfortunately the data wasn't available. I almost added a disclaimer but my post was too long as is. Even if you want to disregard that example though you should still be able to see that if you understand how the system works you can accurately determine that a widening power gap is inevitable.
Let me try a different sort of example based on math rather than incomplete statistics:
Every season/era there is power creep, this means we can farm paragon faster than before with each new patch. If this season we both farm paragon at a rate of 100 bil xp per hour and you play 5 hours a day but I play 6 then at the end of 1 week I will have gained 700 bil more xp than you.
Lets say next season power creep allows us to both farm 150 bil xp per hour. If we both play for the same number of hours again I will have 1050 bil more xp than you at the end of 1 week.
The difference between how much we both play doesn't change and yet the difference between your reward and mine increases. My previous example was certainly not scientific but by doing some basic math you can see that a similar outcome is inevitable just because of the systems current design.
(Disclaimer: 150 bil xp per hour next season is a number I pulled out my ass. No one knows what an accurate rate for farming xp next season/era is yet but surely we can all agree that next season/era we will be more powerful than this season/era and therefore able to farm paragon faster. This has already been demonstrated on the current PTR)
What you're not taking into account is that is we assume the case where the largest numeric paragon gap exists (perfectly linear paragon level XP requirement - plvl1 takes 100xp, plvl2 takes a total 200xp etc) the difference in paragon levels will always be the exact same. 20% more paragon on the player playing 20% more.
In any OTHER case (increasing XP requirement per progression) you actually see a smaller paragon gap relative to XP difference.
The part of the system that is broken isn't the XP gains going up making a bigger gap (the gap will always remain the excact same percentage difference no matter how you change the XP creep) it's the fact that a certain subset of gear loads (zDPS XP farming gear) gain exponentially more XP than other builds. The guys in top tier paragon levels are spending, by definition, significant amounts of time playing XP gear builds compared to their actual DPS characters.
In other words if we both farm XP at the same rate per hour we will always be split by a gap relative to our time spent farming and that gap will always be the same amount of power whether we reach paragon 1000 or 10000. 20% more playtime will always be 20% more experience will always be 20% more paragon will always be 20% more main stat. Baseline XP creep has no effect there.
Going back to your quoted numbers the number 1 earner has 22% more paragon than the number 60 earner in season 2. In season three the number 1 earner has 10% more paragon than second place and a 48% lead over 60th place. If we discount Vajet as most likely an anomaly then second place has a 33% lead over 60th place. We absolutely need information about how these players earned that experience as well as relative playime differences in both seasons, however if we assume second place and 60th place represent the same time investment as 1st and 60th in season one and also assume that neither player spent time in XP gear (not likely but necessary to treat them as equal) then the actual paragon gap inflation between seasons is only about 10%. eg the difference in relative power between characters. That's not a whole lot given how much baseline XP has changed.
To illustrate we're going to pretend it's season 10. Everything has gone crazy you're earning ridiculous nXP/hr without any XP gear. First place has got 130000 plvl, 60th is down at "only" 100000 and there's a 30000 plvl gap. Thing is that that 30000 level gap represents exactly the same power gap we're seeing right now (30% mainstat). There's no functional difference in relative character power between such a hypothetical season 10 and the real season 3.
The only major potential issue is XP momentum. That is where the gap is coming from and it isn't exactly difficult to fix. Doesn't need grand sweeping changes or anything just needs an actual curvature to XP requirements. You do need to keep i mind though that there IS a cap to XP/hour, you can only get XP so fast. And you need to remember that paragon levels at extremely high values of paragon (the point when the curve becomes flat) mean essentially nothing to your XP/hr. That means that players will initially pull away then recompress and stabilize as they hit the XP farming wall.
I expect to see a similar amount of power gap inflation in S4 as there was S3. About 10%. Assuming that XP gear builds contributed nothing to the gap.
Solution: After paragon 800, each additional level should only grant 2 main stat (instead of 5). After paragon 1000 - up until 10000 - each additional level should only grant 1 main stat. That would still mean a paragon 1000 player has 400 more main stat than a paragon 800 player, and a paragon 2000 player has 800 more.
Alternative solution by Skelos_bg: "Cap the bonus from stats at P800. Turn the points after P800 in a currency: With this currency the dedicated players who reach P1k, P1.5k, P2k etc can buy special cosmetic rewards, more stash space etc..."
I don't believe the cap should sit at PL-800. Maybe mixing the above solution with cosmetic rewards and stash space increases as you hit certain milestones. (PL1K, 2K, 3K, etc.).
Lastly, I don't think they should increase the amount of the XP needed to level past 2000. Having to attain 485 billion xp for 1 level seems a little ridiculous. They could, however, impose a limiter on xp gain. I.e. at 1000 you receive 95% xp (after bonuses), at 2000 you receive 90%, etc.
What you're not taking into account is that is we assume the case where the largest numeric paragon gap exists (perfectly linear paragon level XP requirement - plvl1 takes 100xp, plvl2 takes a total 200xp etc) the difference in paragon levels will always be the exact same. 20% more paragon on the player playing 20% more.
In any OTHER case (increasing XP requirement per progression) you actually see a smaller paragon gap relative to XP difference.
I'm actually referring to something else, maybe I'm not explaining myself well but I agree with you that increasing the xp per paragon required for each additional level produces smaller power gaps than a linear scale. The gaps I am talking about are a product of increasing the base value and although the scale of xp to paragon being linear or not is certainly a factor in power gaps It doesn't change my core point.
the gap will always remain the excact same percentage difference no matter how you change the XP creep)
In other words if we both farm XP at the same rate per hour we will always be split by a gap relative to our time spent farming and that gap will always be the same amount of power whether we reach paragon 1000 or 10000. 20% more playtime will always be 20% more experience will always be 20% more paragon will always be 20% more main stat. Baseline XP creep has no effect there.
Here is where I'm looking at something different than you are. While in your example you correctly state that 20% more playtime = 20% more xp gained = 20% more mainstat you aren't looking at the absolute value of that 20%. That's the point I was trying to make. We both agree that base xp creep has no effect on the relationship between the 2 playtimes as a percentage but it does change the absolute value (the exact amount of xp).
From a competitive standpoint it would be preferable to maintain a smaller absolute power difference between players as it will result in closer competition. With the current structure of the system the absolute power difference will increase between 2 different playtimes whenever the ability to farm xp per hour increases which it does everytime a new major patch is released.
This is by no means the only issue with the paragon system, many other problems have already been discussed in this thread, I just want to point out one more thing that is mostly overlooked and which if left unchecked will result in progressively less close competition. I suppose it is subjective whether increasing power gaps or close competition matter to the game but I personally find it strange that the system works this way. Keep in mind that when the current paragon was introduced we did not yet have seasons/eras so there was no regularly scheduled power creep. Under those circumstances this specific issue didn't exist. It is actually the way the paragon system interacts with power creep that creates a scaling power gap and it's important to consider if that is good for the game.
On a different note bonus xp gear and the way xp bonuses are calculated in greater rifts are a far bigger issue for multiple reasons and any other flaws in the paragon system are magnified by these problems. Removing bonus xp gear from the game would be the single best thing Blizzard could do for the paragon system although the other issues presented in this thread and elsewhere need to be addressed at some point as well.
The absolute value difference is completely meaningless though. It's a nonsensical metric that doesn't express comparative power between characters and the only way to eliminate it is to completely remove the level system as a product of playtime.
The "absolute power difference" you're talking about is just a product of relative stat totals (compounded a small amount by player efficiency). Barring capping XP gains per day there's no way to guarantee players with arbitrary playtime differences are on an "equal field".
Now if you wanted to "accurately" reflect player leaderboard standing then every player would need to be placed on a leaderboard respective to other p[layers in their playtime bracket. It would theoretically reflect player skill and efficiency of their leveling. If you wanted to perfectly reflect player efficiency then you'd have a leaderboard which ranks players based on their XP gain rate rather than their absolute XP total.
But it all boils down to there being no "scaling power gap". It's a figment of your imagination. The only time one EVER exists as you describe is if two players play at two different points in the season. A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences. It's the same competition with bigger numbers.
The effect that XP inflation has on non-seasonal is a total non-issue of course. It's not intended to be "balanced" it's just a dumping ground for testing and casual play. The fact that there are even leaderboards at all is idiotic to be honest.
And FYI blizz is destroying XP bonus gear and XP calculation last I checked.
Autocthon: A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences.
No, it is not.
Btw, a comment I really liked on the US forums by Athrias:
Athrias:
There's no reason to have more than 800 Paragon levels on Seasonal. Paragon is power, and having paragon uncapped means leaderboards become an EXP grinding contest. Yes people should be rewarded for what they put into the game, but this kind of system just encourages botting and endless grinding. If you want to be on a leaderboard for having a stupidly high paragon, then Blizz should just add a Paragon leaderboard. Problem solved.
If Blizzard decides that they want the competitive aspect of D3 to be Paragon level then so be it, but a completely uncapped EXP grind isn't competitive, it's just an uncapped grind. For D3 to have any respect as a competitive platform skill must be a significant deciding factor in ranking, if not the most.
This is an interesting topic. Normally I just post on the official forums and lurk on this one and reddit, but I had a question related to this topic and couldn't find it answered elsewhere.
There has been a lot of consternation over main stat inflation after p800, but has anyone actually mined the data correlating paragon level to leaderboard position? It's something I would expect d3ladder to have, but I couldn't find it there. Of course, until 2.3 when there will be snapshots of this data, we will only have the data as it exists when it is mined rather than when the leaderboard placements were achieved. But it would be interesting nonetheless to see how current paragon correlates to leaderboard placement.
Regarding this topic, my view is that the xp curve itself is not necessarily a problem. If required xp gains were continually exponential without corresponding exponential growth in the ability of players to achieve them, there would be little incentive to continue playing the game. The problem is certainly the main stat inflation starting at p800 and how relatively easy it is to gain power starting at p800 compared to prior. It seems like blizz should have seen this coming when they allowed multiplicative xp gains in GRs to persist. Prior to that they probably didn't anticipate many people even achieving p800 in the near future, but to have allowed the multiplicative gains to persist without some sort of plan in place to mitigate the power creep after p800 was extremely shortsighted on their part.
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...
Thanks for sharing. I get the issue, but it's not really relevant. We know top leaderboard spots are generally:
15+ hours/day
Thus, super high paragon/stats
THUD or some other exploit other people at the top are using (otherwise not at the top)
Been around enough high level players to verify the above. Casual players will never have a chance at high leaderboard placement, sorry, that's just not what the system is designed for.
I agree paragon is a bit lackluster (it's just stats, not customization), but the 1% of 1% of 1% who reach P2000+, well, they deserve it. It's a grind game after all and they're grinding it out their entire lives, for whatever reason appeals to them.
I'll be lucky to hit P800 combined after this season, and I'm perfectly ok with that.
It doesn't matter if it only affects 1% or 10% or 100% of the player base. Don't you get it? This problem is so severe. It is a major design flaw. It is unfathomable from a designer's perspective. Something needs to be adjusted. The (sometimes not so) bright D3 designers probably thought the same as you: spololo nobody will ever reach p2000.
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...
Ok, so if the API doesn't support leaderboards, then sites like diabloprogress and diablo3ladder are mining the leaderboard positions manually? I would think then that it would be trivial to mine paragon at the same time since they are already mining paragon anyway for their paragon boards. It would be interesting to get a comment from someone who does this, as I know little about the mechanics.
It's a good point about waiting until the season/era ends, but I would think getting the data at several regular intervals during the season/era would produce some useful information - especially post 2.3 when snapshots will be available.
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.
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 irrelevant for this discussion.
The reason I brought it up in this thread and that it seems relevant to this discussion is that it might demonstrate through hard data what is already suspected, that the main stat inflation that occurs after p800 is a major factor in leaderboard position. This to me is THE major flaw with the paragon system as it currently exists - that it distorts the fairness of the competitive environment and essentially invalidates the leaderboards. I don't think anyone is denying that people who play more should have more power and therefore more advantage, but the p800+ main stat inflation is grossly more advantage than is justified - especially given the exacerbating problems you point out in the OP about how much easier it is to level above 750 and 2000 relative to below.
If someone who mines this data would simply publish each player's paragon level with their leaderboard position, that would do it, and I have no idea why they don't. I realize that until 2.3 when full snapshots are available, paragon would still be a dynamic number in such rankings whereas GR-based position would be static. However, I still think publishing both together now would shed some statistical light on a major reason the paragon system needs rework.
I hope it is extremely exponential after paragon 2500. They probably selected paragon 2500 because they are sure no one will reach it before 2.3 is out.
"Yes people should be rewarded for what they put into the game, but this
kind of system just encourages botting and endless grinding."
I find that to be a really weird statement. How else do you compete in diablo? The whole game is one huge grinder (grind levels, grind gear, grind paragon, grind gems). This is kindof the exact same problem that the devs were worried would occur with pvp, that balance would be an issue and they didn't want to have to constantly re-blance things over competition. Well, guess they forgot when adding pve competition. Pretty much everyone was fine with paragon levels until it became an issue when competing on leaderboards. Now we have people attempting to break game systems for competitions sake. Paragon should be left alone (and it seems damage has already been done) and the change should be made to the competition instead since that is the only thing where paragon is a problem. I still say cap it in competitive modes only and leave non-competitive modes untouched.
If total xp required for P2.5k is 204324847000000, then we'll see the first P2.5k in S4 after 2 months.
Edit: And if xp P2.5k-P5.5k scales linearly, then after 100 days we'll see P3.2k, where the average player (4h/day) will be around P1.6k. This is 8000 main stat difference. And the solo player will be... Hmm no point in calcing that, I doubt anyone will play solo.
So by being unoriginal, you get bored faster? Hmmmm, logic. From your opening statement though, that's EXACTLY what paragon is SUPPOSED to be. You wanna see dedicated players flee the boat? Cap paragon and insert vanity items for playing 12+ hours a day. See how long it lasts.
No, you see 'low level' paragons saying everything is fine. You have high level paragons saying 'I feel like I have to farm to compete.' or "I have to wear a hellfire ring because reason 13234".
I don't really understand the problem that keeps cropping up... All I keep hearing is "It's too powerful to ignore". Agreed. "It's broken" it's doing exactly what it's supposed to.
Also, Vajet's main concern didn't seem like it was paragons or farming them, but that botting and farming rift trials and using support builds sucks. Which ties directly to another issue that keeps cropping up, and that's that support builds allow DPS builds to push higher, but I'll leave that one alone.
You have yet to prove the point you're trying to make. and every single comparison that has been made has been at least 150-1000 paragon level differences. Nonsense basically.
I'll agree that the current mathematical model used is... Do they have one? I agree that it should be altered. However, I regrettably don't feel compelled to change it because of the reward as much as it offends my eyes in that graph format. Burn it already! p0 - How about (x^2)+b? p750 - Let's try (x*m)+b? p2000 - Nah bro, it's just (x+b) now.
I suggest that they normalize the numbers if they're becoming too great and scale monster xp accordingly. Make the whole thing a nice formula and keep total xp below 9 quintillion if the issue is overflow related.
"We", "Everyone" - Argumentum ad populum. "You people" - Argumentum ad hominem. "Your dumb" - Contractionem absum.
What you're not taking into account is that is we assume the case where the largest numeric paragon gap exists (perfectly linear paragon level XP requirement - plvl1 takes 100xp, plvl2 takes a total 200xp etc) the difference in paragon levels will always be the exact same. 20% more paragon on the player playing 20% more.
In any OTHER case (increasing XP requirement per progression) you actually see a smaller paragon gap relative to XP difference.
The part of the system that is broken isn't the XP gains going up making a bigger gap (the gap will always remain the excact same percentage difference no matter how you change the XP creep) it's the fact that a certain subset of gear loads (zDPS XP farming gear) gain exponentially more XP than other builds. The guys in top tier paragon levels are spending, by definition, significant amounts of time playing XP gear builds compared to their actual DPS characters.
In other words if we both farm XP at the same rate per hour we will always be split by a gap relative to our time spent farming and that gap will always be the same amount of power whether we reach paragon 1000 or 10000. 20% more playtime will always be 20% more experience will always be 20% more paragon will always be 20% more main stat. Baseline XP creep has no effect there.
Going back to your quoted numbers the number 1 earner has 22% more paragon than the number 60 earner in season 2. In season three the number 1 earner has 10% more paragon than second place and a 48% lead over 60th place. If we discount Vajet as most likely an anomaly then second place has a 33% lead over 60th place. We absolutely need information about how these players earned that experience as well as relative playime differences in both seasons, however if we assume second place and 60th place represent the same time investment as 1st and 60th in season one and also assume that neither player spent time in XP gear (not likely but necessary to treat them as equal) then the actual paragon gap inflation between seasons is only about 10%. eg the difference in relative power between characters. That's not a whole lot given how much baseline XP has changed.
To illustrate we're going to pretend it's season 10. Everything has gone crazy you're earning ridiculous nXP/hr without any XP gear. First place has got 130000 plvl, 60th is down at "only" 100000 and there's a 30000 plvl gap. Thing is that that 30000 level gap represents exactly the same power gap we're seeing right now (30% mainstat). There's no functional difference in relative character power between such a hypothetical season 10 and the real season 3.
The only major potential issue is XP momentum. That is where the gap is coming from and it isn't exactly difficult to fix. Doesn't need grand sweeping changes or anything just needs an actual curvature to XP requirements. You do need to keep i mind though that there IS a cap to XP/hour, you can only get XP so fast. And you need to remember that paragon levels at extremely high values of paragon (the point when the curve becomes flat) mean essentially nothing to your XP/hr. That means that players will initially pull away then recompress and stabilize as they hit the XP farming wall.
I expect to see a similar amount of power gap inflation in S4 as there was S3. About 10%. Assuming that XP gear builds contributed nothing to the gap.
I don't believe the cap should sit at PL-800. Maybe mixing the above solution with cosmetic rewards and stash space increases as you hit certain milestones. (PL1K, 2K, 3K, etc.).
Lastly, I don't think they should increase the amount of the XP needed to level past 2000. Having to attain 485 billion xp for 1 level seems a little ridiculous. They could, however, impose a limiter on xp gain. I.e. at 1000 you receive 95% xp (after bonuses), at 2000 you receive 90%, etc.
I'm actually referring to something else, maybe I'm not explaining myself well but I agree with you that increasing the xp per paragon required for each additional level produces smaller power gaps than a linear scale. The gaps I am talking about are a product of increasing the base value and although the scale of xp to paragon being linear or not is certainly a factor in power gaps It doesn't change my core point.
Here is where I'm looking at something different than you are. While in your example you correctly state that 20% more playtime = 20% more xp gained = 20% more mainstat you aren't looking at the absolute value of that 20%. That's the point I was trying to make. We both agree that base xp creep has no effect on the relationship between the 2 playtimes as a percentage but it does change the absolute value (the exact amount of xp).
From a competitive standpoint it would be preferable to maintain a smaller absolute power difference between players as it will result in closer competition. With the current structure of the system the absolute power difference will increase between 2 different playtimes whenever the ability to farm xp per hour increases which it does everytime a new major patch is released.
This is by no means the only issue with the paragon system, many other problems have already been discussed in this thread, I just want to point out one more thing that is mostly overlooked and which if left unchecked will result in progressively less close competition. I suppose it is subjective whether increasing power gaps or close competition matter to the game but I personally find it strange that the system works this way. Keep in mind that when the current paragon was introduced we did not yet have seasons/eras so there was no regularly scheduled power creep. Under those circumstances this specific issue didn't exist. It is actually the way the paragon system interacts with power creep that creates a scaling power gap and it's important to consider if that is good for the game.
On a different note bonus xp gear and the way xp bonuses are calculated in greater rifts are a far bigger issue for multiple reasons and any other flaws in the paragon system are magnified by these problems. Removing bonus xp gear from the game would be the single best thing Blizzard could do for the paragon system although the other issues presented in this thread and elsewhere need to be addressed at some point as well.
The absolute value difference is completely meaningless though. It's a nonsensical metric that doesn't express comparative power between characters and the only way to eliminate it is to completely remove the level system as a product of playtime.
The "absolute power difference" you're talking about is just a product of relative stat totals (compounded a small amount by player efficiency). Barring capping XP gains per day there's no way to guarantee players with arbitrary playtime differences are on an "equal field".
Now if you wanted to "accurately" reflect player leaderboard standing then every player would need to be placed on a leaderboard respective to other p[layers in their playtime bracket. It would theoretically reflect player skill and efficiency of their leveling. If you wanted to perfectly reflect player efficiency then you'd have a leaderboard which ranks players based on their XP gain rate rather than their absolute XP total.
But it all boils down to there being no "scaling power gap". It's a figment of your imagination. The only time one EVER exists as you describe is if two players play at two different points in the season. A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences. It's the same competition with bigger numbers.
The effect that XP inflation has on non-seasonal is a total non-issue of course. It's not intended to be "balanced" it's just a dumping ground for testing and casual play. The fact that there are even leaderboards at all is idiotic to be honest.
And FYI blizz is destroying XP bonus gear and XP calculation last I checked.
Btw, a comment I really liked on the US forums by Athrias:
This is an interesting topic. Normally I just post on the official forums and lurk on this one and reddit, but I had a question related to this topic and couldn't find it answered elsewhere.
There has been a lot of consternation over main stat inflation after p800, but has anyone actually mined the data correlating paragon level to leaderboard position? It's something I would expect d3ladder to have, but I couldn't find it there. Of course, until 2.3 when there will be snapshots of this data, we will only have the data as it exists when it is mined rather than when the leaderboard placements were achieved. But it would be interesting nonetheless to see how current paragon correlates to leaderboard placement.
Regarding this topic, my view is that the xp curve itself is not necessarily a problem. If required xp gains were continually exponential without corresponding exponential growth in the ability of players to achieve them, there would be little incentive to continue playing the game. The problem is certainly the main stat inflation starting at p800 and how relatively easy it is to gain power starting at p800 compared to prior. It seems like blizz should have seen this coming when they allowed multiplicative xp gains in GRs to persist. Prior to that they probably didn't anticipate many people even achieving p800 in the near future, but to have allowed the multiplicative gains to persist without some sort of plan in place to mitigate the power creep after p800 was extremely shortsighted on their part.
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...
It doesn't matter if it only affects 1% or 10% or 100% of the player base. Don't you get it? This problem is so severe. It is a major design flaw. It is unfathomable from a designer's perspective. Something needs to be adjusted. The (sometimes not so) bright D3 designers probably thought the same as you: spololo nobody will ever reach p2000.
Ok, so if the API doesn't support leaderboards, then sites like diabloprogress and diablo3ladder are mining the leaderboard positions manually? I would think then that it would be trivial to mine paragon at the same time since they are already mining paragon anyway for their paragon boards. It would be interesting to get a comment from someone who does this, as I know little about the mechanics.
It's a good point about waiting until the season/era ends, but I would think getting the data at several regular intervals during the season/era would produce some useful information - especially post 2.3 when snapshots will be available.
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.
The reason I brought it up in this thread and that it seems relevant to this discussion is that it might demonstrate through hard data what is already suspected, that the main stat inflation that occurs after p800 is a major factor in leaderboard position. This to me is THE major flaw with the paragon system as it currently exists - that it distorts the fairness of the competitive environment and essentially invalidates the leaderboards. I don't think anyone is denying that people who play more should have more power and therefore more advantage, but the p800+ main stat inflation is grossly more advantage than is justified - especially given the exacerbating problems you point out in the OP about how much easier it is to level above 750 and 2000 relative to below.
If someone who mines this data would simply publish each player's paragon level with their leaderboard position, that would do it, and I have no idea why they don't. I realize that until 2.3 when full snapshots are available, paragon would still be a dynamic number in such rankings whereas GR-based position would be static. However, I still think publishing both together now would shed some statistical light on a major reason the paragon system needs rework.
They changed it again with the today's patch.
@Bagstone, can you update the chart, please?
I can only do that if I get the exact data... Don't have that. Or did I miss something?
I hope it is extremely exponential after paragon 2500. They probably selected paragon 2500 because they are sure no one will reach it before 2.3 is out.
Would be good if some people from the ptr share data above P2.5k, because the paragon grind fest is going to start at 28-th of August.
They can't share data because no one is close to 2.5K Paragon. Bug that was used to gather data about Paragon system was fixed.
"Yes people should be rewarded for what they put into the game, but this
kind of system just encourages botting and endless grinding."
I find that to be a really weird statement. How else do you compete in diablo? The whole game is one huge grinder (grind levels, grind gear, grind paragon, grind gems). This is kindof the exact same problem that the devs were worried would occur with pvp, that balance would be an issue and they didn't want to have to constantly re-blance things over competition. Well, guess they forgot when adding pve competition. Pretty much everyone was fine with paragon levels until it became an issue when competing on leaderboards. Now we have people attempting to break game systems for competitions sake. Paragon should be left alone (and it seems damage has already been done) and the change should be made to the competition instead since that is the only thing where paragon is a problem. I still say cap it in competitive modes only and leave non-competitive modes untouched.
If total xp required for P2.5k is 204324847000000, then we'll see the first P2.5k in S4 after 2 months.
Edit: And if xp P2.5k-P5.5k scales linearly, then after 100 days we'll see P3.2k, where the average player (4h/day) will be around P1.6k. This is 8000 main stat difference. And the solo player will be... Hmm no point in calcing that, I doubt anyone will play solo.