CharanJaydemyr wrote:

This argument exists elsewhere and is being engaged by people who know MoC inside out.

But MoC is a placeholder and not something I've any interest in trying. It is not, in my opinion, part of the game GGG are essentially designing.

The fact that they're going to reduce the 'difficulty' levels from 4 to 3 with the completion of act 3 tells me that GGG have in mind the idea that more content gives them the chance to slowly move away from the 'recycled levels and monsters' model standard to ARPGs but generally shunned in MMOs. Sure, MMOs will reuse models, but level-wise, it's expected that zones continue to be released for higher levels.

I suppose you could look at Guild Wars 1's late-game implementation of 'hard mode' which was essentially the same as replaying the game at a higher difficulty level. But this was added quite close to the end of the game's life, around the announcement of Gw2 I believe (give or take).

Naturally, if we're going from 8 'acts' with the current build (2 x 4 difficulties) to 9 'acts' with Open (3 x 3), then it's fair to say that GGG would need to develop somewhere between 8-10 *unique* acts to do away with level recycling altogether.

...That's a daunting task!