Istaryu wrote:noibo wrote:its still just a race to hell.
Why shouldnt it be a race to hell?
Because by "race to hell" he actually means "waste of time". Why shouldn't the game waste our time? Because that's not fun.
Yeah, all the new content is there, so ... stop putting all the new content there?
Nightmare feels like a massive waste of time both in terms of environments because any remotely decent build can breeze through the exact same stuff you just did in Normal and in terms of character building because nothing interesting happens to skill trees during those levels.
For Environments:
The only interesting thing that happens during Nightmare is the early visit to Tran Athulua so a simple solution would be to put at least one similar challenge in each act. Maybe The Butcher, Tran Athulua, Death Projector, Library of Fate, and Assault on Mount Arreat.
The charms from those challenges should give buffs to things like Bonus XP, Magic Find, and Move Speed so it's actually worthwhile getting them early as you pass through the acts rather than just more damage which you can come back for at any point when you're overlevelled. Charging Arcane Crystals for being overlevelled when you craft the Sunstone serves the same purpose, but isn't very elegant.
I'd also like to see stronger death penalties:
- Without a lockout timer, Tran Athulua (and other "challenges") are more of a time sink than a challenge.
- Same for act bosses too, though that might not be possible for Diablo since he's out in the open so he should at least recover a significant amount of health when you die. I think I read that they currently recover 5%, but that's basically nothing with how easy they are. It should be 25% or more for an actual deterrent against just death rushing them.
- Or if possible, give the player a cumulative debuff for each death which is only cleared by save and exit.
For Character Building:
Why bother increasing the max level to 150 when you're leaving levels 50-90 mostly empty? Just cut out those levels to reduce the time wasting and numerical bloat. Something like this:
- Normal - Up to Level 30 - Set up the core skills of your build. Being underlevelled as you push through should mean you just miss out on important skills so things are notably harder.
- Nightmare - Up to Level 50 - Unlock Reward skills. Choosing 2/5 would be much more interesting than 1/3 with everyone getting the same other 2 for their class which might or might not be useful for their build.
- Hell - Up to Level 65 - Unlock masteries and tree dedication skills (i.e. must have spent 50 points in this tree, maybe reduce to 35 or 40).
- Then all the hardest content is just about getting charms. Character building is less interesting at this point but the gameplay is fun because of the challenge. It would be cool if you actually had to choose between some charms such as only being able to use one elemental sunstone from Tran Athulua so you actually do have to still make occasional build choices rather than farming until you get a good enough copy of each one.
The very early levelling experience also needs some love, even if only by rearranging certain skills that are useless until later on. For example:
- Assassin - Blink - there's nothing to blink over in Act 1 and nothing worth stunning for a long time. Swap it with Queen of Blades (level 25) which is a cool iconic skill for the class.
- Paladin - Elemental Wisdom is hella useless at that level. Put Spark of Hope first.
- Paladin - Veneration of Justice and Ward of Fate have a uselessly short duration without the upgrade in the Nephalem tree, so just put them in that tree.
- Paladin - The cooldown on Divine Judgement is too easy to remove. I barely had any reason to use it instead of Retaliate before the cooldown was gone. I still don't understand why you would intentionally make it bad to level your primary attack skill, but surely if the build needs something to sink 5 points into it could at least feel worthwhile like upgrading the number of hits that rain down or the area or something.
- Barbarian - None of the Whirlwind upgrades are meaningful in the early game and the skill isn't very effective without the AoE from Gale Force. Put Gale Force earlier so it's actually worth playing with the skill you're building for early on.