Forced leveling? I'll just have to go along with what other people think that means. If forced leveling means a requirement to move through the game, such as "level 10 is required to move to Act II" etc. then no, there are no current plans to put level requirements on progressing through the game.
As far as I'm aware it's hasn't been mentioned by a Blizzard employee as being potentially included in Diablo III, but I could very well be mistaken.
So this level requirement business is usually discussed as a solution to 'glitch rushing' or a way of quickly leveling a character through use of bugs and loopholes. The assumption that these bugs and loopholes will exist in Diablo III in the first place is somewhat of a stretch of logic (maybe not as much as I'd like ;). So, the most obvious and popular solution is a level requirement. And yeah, it could work, but unless you can normalize XP gains you're probably fairly often going to be simply holding people back for no good reason. They've completed the act legitimately, but they're a single level shy of the requirement. Now they have to go grind for no reason other than to level so they can continue playing the game. It's not a very graceful solution. No, but there are solutions... nay, improvements! in how progression through the game can be handled. Ones that offer not only regulations on progression, but enhance the game itself.
Unless restricted, any level player can join a game. To join a party, you must be within the range of x levels. If you want to play with your friends who are low levels, then when you join the party it asks if you agree to being a lower level, and not getting experience, BUT, getting gold.
In a simpler way. I join a game with 3 low levels playing in a party, those people in that party, are in a range of x levels apart. If I am over this range of x, then when I accept to join a party, I am told the restrictions of not getting xp, but only getting gold. I wouldn't get as much gold either, only a small amount (it shouldn't be too good to get cash). When I accept the restrictions my level will be lowered to ONE level below the highest level'd character in that party I am joining.
I will have all the skills, and stat points that I had when I was that level. If I was level 50, and joined a party of a level 20, 25, and 15. I would be automatically lowered to 24 (a level below the highest level).
It is pretty much like I was that level again. For the gear. I don't suggest making them useless (because of the reduced stats), but make their stats 40% reduced.
If you are a lower level, and want to join a high level party, then you can. But your level won't be higher, and you probably won't be able to get to an area too strong for you to hurt a monster. If you are z levels below the level of the monsters you are fighting, then you shouldn't get xp..
I was just writing a lot, sorry if I repeated myself, and spelling errors..
Didnt catch what I meant?
If you cant allow a player to do what he wants when he wants in your entire game world, such as a level 1 in World of Warcraft wanting to hang out in Northrend, (which they can), then your game isnt fun, its restrictive.
That heavily depends on the game. There are many games that require restrictions to keep the storyline going the way it's supposed to, to keep a player from being over-powered, to keep a player from TPPKing *cough fix in the patch cough*. Total freedom isn't fun- it ruins it for other players and can make the game, itself, harder to get through. In this case, I agree, the freedom should be there, but we all know that our post modern generation has learned not to deal in absolute ideals
However, could they not put in some kind of leveling feature where you get absolutely lame EXP if you don't... do anything? Or don't get the quest completed on your character?
In the end though, putting these types of restrictions may seem like a good idea in the first place, but after getting level 70, 80, 90+ on a couple chars, I'd be bored as fuck going through all the acts over again.
And anyway, I'm sure people will find ways around whatever kind of restrictions they put in place, if they do infact do that..
that sounds stupid
...do not have forced leveling be required in D3, at least give people a choice to turn it off. It was a major let down when they announced that there might be forced leveling in D3.
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I posted on the official forums but I guess no one agrees with me. It sounds like he is saying he heard it might be in D3 as though its a new feature. Also the option to turn it off would totally undermine the point of it in the first place.
Based on that I think he is talking about auto-stats.
1. Blizz has discussed possibility of auto-stats. Have not heard anything about lvl reqs.
2. The option to automatically put points into stats vs. manually is much more reasonable than enabling vs disabling level requirements.
3. Forced leveling sounds to me like automatic leveling which isnt far from automatic stat placement. After all leveling is just a number unless your stats increase.
But hey maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, seems like once again Bashiok posted in a thread that didn't make any sense.
The reason people did this, it just was so much faster, why do the slow way, when you could have higher levels grind you up to 90s?
I don't see them doing that in D3, they didn't even do it in D2 (except maybe the ancients?) as far as "forced leveling"
They'll probably end up doing something like they have in Diablo II now
Where you do tristram runs for so many levels then you do act 2 runs.
Id like to see like end act rushes for certain level caps like
Normal act I Leoric tomb runs level 13-20 (most exp gain)
Normal act II _ _ _ _ _ runs level 20-28 (ideal exp)
and so forth.
I think of they balance the game around that, it would make it a lot more fun.
A fair, and even transition between a certain level gap and the acts/bosses.
Instead of doing like LVL 1-30 on a lower tier something and then grinding 55-99 on a higher tier which gets old fast in PVM.
If they balanced it out evenly, it would keep the game fresh, and would keep people thinking "man I cant wait to do the next tier dungeon raids, the gear is so much better"
If they did something like that, and kept it somewhat fast (no where near mmo leveling times) You'd have a pretty fun game imo.
AFI - my 2 copper
When you leave a bunch of kids alone in a room they make up RULES for GAMES because without rules and limitations a game isn't any fun.
Your efforts don't feel so great to the faction when you faceroll the enemies with your eyes shut
Also make partying impossible if the companion is 15 levels or more higher than you. If you are 5 levels or more lower than partymember you gain less exp. If you are 10 -15 levels lower than partymember you gain close to 0 exp. This would make people do some work again for their characters and not just get rushed and leech exp.
Level restrictions aren't that bad either. Lets see D2 for example. I've played the game trough dozens of times without rushing.
Normal:
Act1: When I run trough the areas killing monsters and doing quests I'm quite often 13-15 level at Andariel. So make the level restriction 12 at Act1->Act2
Act2: Generally I'm about 22-24 at Duriel so Level restriction could be 20-22.
Act3: Only about 26 max when dealing with Mephisto So level restriction to move Act4 could be 24
Act4: Leveling here could be tedious sometimes, but most of the times you have to push over 30 in order to move nightmare (this is in classic). But the restriction to move to nightmare in classic version could be 25.
Something like this could be the way to implement restrictions to D2. Anyways, if we don't want Act restrictions, there should be at least difficulty level restrictions. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to get to higher difficulty before 25 or something.
And this is how i feel about respecing! : )
I dont see why they dont just make it so its like diablo II but this time if the person is over 20 lvl's higher than you, noone gains exp or something like that. they could tweak this until basically rushing is VERY minimal. I mean you can make it through the acts, but what good does that do when you are a low lvl and just have to go back to fight in easier acts and difficulty modes.
the one thing i have to say is forced leveling is bad and by no means should be included.
but if they do do it
they need to make sure the lvl restrictions are a little lower than if you were to kill roughly 60% of everything in every area to the point you want the restriction at
that way for most players if they beat the act and at least did like half the stuff
they could still pass
but still restrict total nooby characters from going to a new area
so basically as long as the lvls are low but high enough so you cant just do one quest and rush the game
you can also make mini bosses where you cant go to the next area unless you beat them
i think that would be a better idea
that way you dont have to worry about lvls but instead when your good enough to beat a certain decently strong boss
you can advance
and they can have multiple bosses like this in every act
like bosses like king leoric or a butcher wannabe xD
they could include reccemmended lvls for the quests as well just to help noobs out a little more
Everything always seems like there is a positive and negative in theory, but in practice things start to change a lot. Especially in practice by thousands of players.