Official Blizzard Quote:
We've been working with a level cap that's quite a bit different. It was something I had alluded to a while back but I think it's probably worth discussing sooner rather than later.
So, we're working with a lower level cap for a myriad of reasons but really the main point that they're more or less all linked to is that we came to the conclusion that a cap of 99 exists for the sake of itself. Meaning that it's a really high number despite all sorts of good things like meaningful player/skill/power pacing, item distribution, balance, etc. It's sort of this long term goal that really didn't matter, almost an Achievement without the flashy graphics or *bwong* sound. You didn't need to reach 99 to do anything, in almost all ways the game stopped somewhere in the 80's (for a lot of people a lot lower), but by stretching the player out over an additional 20 or so levels to 99 it created all sorts of issues we were having problems justifying forcing the game in to. So we're working with a level cap of 60 at the moment.
This is the point where some of you scream "60!? That's like original World of Warcraft!" And then the rest of you /facepalm and say "60!? Couldn't you pick any other number? Now everyone is going to compare it to World of Warcraft!"
The 60 level cap we're working with came from a lot of time and thinking about our content and how we want the experience to feel at every level. It so happens that it works for us really well.
Of course it all comes down to an XP curve. We could, for instance, say the level cap in Diablo III is 60 and then pace that curve and gain out over what we estimate it took someone to reach 99 in Diablo II. Of course we wouldn't do that but it should help illustrate that the time from 1-60 in Diablo II does not equal the amount of time it will take to reach 60 in Diablo III. 60 levels versus 99 levels doesn't mean less content or less powerful characters, etc. These aren't uniform levels of power that move from game to game. And in fact we are pushing a longer game that Diablo II and I'd argue our characters feel way more powerful. Ok, that out of the way, moving on!
The leveling experience is always going to stop somewhere because the real game is the item hunt. So, instead of letting it drag out to a less meaningful 80 or so levels like most people saw in Diablo II, we have 60 levels of awesome; at every level you'll get a meaningful and noticeable increase in power. It has a ton of other benefits and fixes a lot of problems a higher cap causes, but I'll take pause.
Bashiok pointed out some very good reasons for this level cap. Most importantly, that this number really is arbitrary. Whether it is sixty or ninety-nine, the actual game and content will be no different. If anything, it just makes gaining each level that much more rewarding. This could also be beneficial for helping with end game content with the natural flow of then end of the game getting your character to max level. Bashiok further commented that the leveling increment would be around level thirty through the first difficulty, level fifty by the end ofthe second and sixty after the hardest difficulty. With this idea, is it possible that the whole game is developed enough to be playable since they know how the flow of leveling will work out over the course of the game?. It will also be interesting to see how this new level cap will work with the new skill system they have in place. Will we only get sixty skill points or will skills not directly level with character level. While this news leave a lot unanswered, it is nice to get another concrete fact about the game.
Meaning that they didn't reduced to 60 because they were having problems with it, they want to make more money by releasing lame ass downloadable (must-buy) content to raise the cap and rip people off.
I have this strange, strange feeling that D3 is not going to live up to diablo's name(in other words, FAIL). And this is the kind of news that just enforces that..
The opposite has been true in diablo2 - it was always about the items. Leveling held very little weight (esp 70/80+) and I don't really think this needs to change. Not saying Blizz as said it will - but condensing the number of levels down to 60 seems so imply that levels will hold a bit more weight than they did compared to d2
Made some quite lengthy posts in this thread explaining a bit more detail Battlenet Thread (username evilstarship - theres 2 posts)
things like this more or less
He did say that we could expect a similar difficulty as reaching 99 for the 60 cap somewhere in there, I think. On that basis, unless you thought reaching 99 was really easy in II, it should be good. I might be mistaken, though.
i think he said it was about as hard as to get to 80-85 (playing the game, not being rushed, naturally) because the last 10-15 levels didnt really make a difference and it didnt feel like such a big accomplishment anyway (never motivated me in the 5 years i played and never got to 99 because it was simply boring, so i get his logic).
its just that they intend to make the level cap mean something and not have the game to end after you hit it (which was pretty much it in Diablo II unless you wanted to grind for something - that you could do with a level 85-87 character anyway).
The main replayability of d2 was the never ending level cap for most players AND the loot people got while doing that.
I didn't do baal runs just for the loot, or just for the XP.. I did it for both. Hopefully you wont be 60 or somewhere close when you end hell. I like the feeling of running dungeons for XP and the Loot.
They will probably pin this down in some sort of way and find a sweet spot for all of us.
(goes and weeps for blizzard's sake in a corner)
its confirmed that the end-game in Diablo III will not be the same as in Diablo II (endless grind of the same bosses/places over and over again till you get the level cap - that wasnt my definition of fun).
what's not said so far - and we should expect more about in Blizzcon is how end-game will be shaped.
is that right?
so Diablo 1 that had a level cap of 50 isnt Diablo, right? it was Warcraft?
seriously dude, its not about the level cap, its about the feeling and the features the game offers. that's Diablo, not the number of the level cap. Grow up and learn to deal with changes.
If level caps are arbitrary then why have a level cap? You yourself are putting arbitrary limits on what a level constitutes. The reality is that you're putting an arbitrary limit on something that you claim is arbitrary in itself.
The reality is that level cap is not arbitrary and it tells you a lot about the game. For example, the level cap is Titan Quest is 65 and was raised in an expansion. As a result, Titan Quest has a much different type of character structure, character design, and character progression than Diablo 2. This is ignoring the obvious differences in class design but that's a rather moot point as both share the common characteristic of having multiple trees.
You are partially right in saying that you would level up much faster in a game that has 500 levels ONLY IF the game is designed to get you through all 500 levels when you reach the end of the game.
In both Titan Quest and Diablo 2 you are not designed to reach the level cap by the time you beat the game. In fact, you're not supposed to be close to it. In TQ you're usually 15-20 or so levels lower than the cap after you've beaten the final boss. In D2 you're usually around 30-40 levels lower than the cap after you've beaten the final boss.
Of course, these numbers are arbitrary because D3 isn't being designed with this in mind. The end game, according to Blizzard, won't revolve around the same things that Diablo 2 and TQ did. Seeing as how the end game in D2 and TQ revolved around killing X boss over and over or going through Y area over and over, this tells me that... I'll be level 60, or very close to it, by the time I fight the final boss on the hardest difficulty.
The alternative is being level 45-55 by the time we fight the final boss.
In other words, we can make two assumptions with the second assumption having two more assumptions:
1. Because we know that the end game will not primarily feature killing bosses and monsters for loot, we have to assume that the end game will functionally be the end of the game and levels will functionally show us how much time we have left until we beat the game.
2. We will reach the end game at a level that is lower than almost any other ARPG and, because of how skill points currently work, our characters will have fewer points to spend.
A. This means that our characters will be highly specialized with points spent to modify single, powerful abilities (similar to the metagame of D2 but very different than TQ).
B. Our characters will have a hand full of skills we can spend a few points in to and then modify if we so desire, effectively defaulting our characters to a jack of all trades and master of none (due to the lower character level).
Anyway, level cap tells us a good deal about the possibilities on the content of the game. Having no level cap tells us that killing monsters endlessly will be the end of the game. Having a level cap doesn't tell us much. However, having a characteristically low level cap coupled with what has been said and what we have seen, we can tell a great deal about the game.
In fact, I'm sure if a group of us sat down, tossed away expectations, and went in to a discussion about everything that has been revealed, we'll have a concept of the game that is close to what to expect along with a few other possibilities incase X or Y is revealed.
I've been an avid Diablo franchise fan for a long time and recently found this site for its great consolidation of Diablo lore and gameplay. Shameless kissing @$$ aside, I decided to reply to this post as my first because it's basis is woefully uniformed, as recently amusingly pointed out in a subsequent post to it. The "assumptions" articulated directly contrasted what Bash (or any other Blizzard rep) have already stated.
Assumption #1: Completely screwed the pooch on that one. If you actually decided to read what Bash stated you'd know that there will be "end game content." Implicitly, that means that the game will not be over after the "final" boss is defeated. There should be other quests (probably side quests) or dungeons to mess around with. There may also be PvP or clan PvP that is restricted to level 60 characters. (Seriously hoping for something like that.) There are any number of things that "end game content" can mean. It is incredibly narrow-minded to think that "end game content" simply means that the game ends and there is no other reason to play.
Assumption #2: Now I know you haven't been reading anything on Blizzard.com or this site. Bash has stated that we will be restricted to set number of skills that we may employ at any one time: 7. There are over 700 skills available to D3. How many skills are available to any one character is anyone's guess. Could be based on simple division of overall available and, then again, it's probably not.
Assumption A: This is about the only thing you wrote that I partially agree with based on the information that we have now. With the number of skills available, as it currently stands, and the ability to use only 7 of them at any given time, specialization only makes sense. Yet I believe that you are wrong in your assumption that each character will have only one dominant skill. That is too much like D2 in playability. If Blizzard is smart, they should make skill combinations for each character and not just the monk (if I remembered that tidbit correctly.) This will reward the player for skill (luck in the beginning) for design and usage of his character. There may be many different ways to play the same character (though, concededly, there is usually an uber one that everyone ascribes to) and play that character well. The skill tree really isn't a tree any longer, but a set of skills. Which 7 skill set will be the one that dominates a character design will take time to discover, if there is one at all.
Assumption B: This part of the post was simply stupid. How can you leap from character specialization to jack-of-all trades? I give you credit for thinking through the character specialization part with partial adequacy, but your belief that everyone will made their characters jack-of-all trades is simply close minded. Even D2 character builds were centered around one dominant killing skill, with a few complementary ones. A jack-of-all trades character in D2 had an incredibly difficult time killing monsters with efficiency and pace. While Blizzard may make and probably should make the higher level skills the most powerful for D3, they don't have to. Besides, a jack-of-all trades character isn't as fun to play as a specialized one and the overall gameplay mechanic isn't as fun if every character was made the same way as the one you own. Blizzard, from everything that has been released thus far, seems to be moving way from this style of game
It may be a slightly different type of Diablo game, but it will be one that I definitely look forward to playing.
For those who compare D3 to WoW... wow. All I can do is shake my head. You will see, skeptics, you will see. :whistling:
You could be right. There is nothing however to stop them from setting a lvl 60 cap in theory then building the game around it instead of building the game and then fitting a level cap as you suggest.
I'm not sure that there will be a 7 skill set which dominates a character design. It all depends on how each individual player wants to play the game. With no synergies (I think) there will be many more active skills used, and with the rune alterations to skills, I don't think any 7 skill set will dominate unless the best runes are available really easily. Even if this is the case, surely there would be allowance in those 7 skills to experiment for your own playing style (eg, if you don't like to constantly be spamming to keyboard to perfectly time every skill use)
Also, there is much more variety in the classes than D2, as you'd expect, which will make it fun to experiment, if not simply because the Barbarian looks and feels tougher than your weak ranged mage.
actually that's exactly how it is:
Official Blizzard Quote:
@Theeliminator2k You can spend into seven skills at a time, total. These are active skills and don't include passives.
thing is that Diablo III end-game wont be anything like Diablo II end-game.
we wont be mindlessly be running bosses for loots and xp as it was but we'll get to do something else that's kinda secret at this point.
i can't wait for more info on this, but i'm rather interested in the solution, because frankly, Diablo II end-game was too boring and never motivated me enough to reach the level cap because i didnt see a point.
Beat me to the response. I very much agree with the kill Baal (or Diablo and Baal)...log out...repeat (for hours and hours) grind. It was boring as hell after about the (insert subjective hour mark here) hour of it. I always had to create another (different) character just to keep it fresh.
Hopefully Blizzcon won't let us down and give us some concrete answers...