Reduce Acts in the next patch

For me, cruel by by far the least intresting difficulty. It starts off too easy, because you already faced harder zones in normal and it doesn't really get that much harder as you go. The whole difficulty just seems like something you have to go through as quickly as possible and that is very bad for the feel of the game.

Now that we have masters and their dailies, you tend to be even more ahead and this makes cruel even more unintresting.

And the point about gear is also pretty close to my experience as well. Because you are just passing through and don't really need the better gear, you tend to just save your orbs and currency for later and use what ever just happens to be ok. If you are not playing in a fresh league, you often just use uniques at this point.

This is from a player that plays through all the acts without using TPs to jump ahead. And i think that act 1 normal is perhaps the best act in terms of game experience, because there it so much more about the atmosphere and you options are so limited that you have to be a bit careful.

But, they are not going to remove cruel now. With act 5 they should though.

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LillyAnn wrote:

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So because some players have a problem with cruel doesn't mean everyone does.

I find cruel to be the quickest of all difficulties once all those skill gems you've acquired come into play it's not a bad run through.

While I definitely know why it's there - it is a drastic stepping stone that's needed with so few acts in the game sitll just to give us enough leveling power - with the current pace of the game, it does have a slightly deadzoneish feel to it. This is obviously dependent on what build you're playing (specifically, how slot hungry it is). If all you need to clear maps is a 4 link, 2 auras and a cwdt/ic setup, cruel is a breeze cause you only need a 3 link and a 4 link and 2 spare slots. That's easy enough to maintain.

Heavens forbid you're playing a summoner when you need every peice of gear to be fully slotted and at least 3 4-links, and 1 3-link at all times after level 31. While that's made easier by the fact that you never swap out your boots at all and only rarely trade out your helm and weapon - it's still a problem. I find my 2 2-handed static strikers both are extremely link-hungry. Cruel for the duelist was a dull and boring affair, but the templar had a hell of a time with it.

It just depends on your build.


@Dirk: XP penalty is fairly valid - but I don't think anyone in the history of ever has noticed the cruel chaos res penalty. "oooh - chaos does slightly more damage - just like everything else in the game -.-"
With regards to the XP penalty though - I find it honestly just adds a hassle to the "still leveling on subpar gear" process. It's okay when your build is strong enough to participate in the content, but when you're still getting up to strength it's just annoying.


I would like to reiterate however - there really isn't a fix for this. Unless linked items are more common - until they drop cruel and merciless difficulties, there's nothing to be done to allieviate mid-game tedium.

To me, normal is a good run through to acquire gems and get a feel for the character. Obviously it's just a personal preference, but not having to play cruel would mean that once the new character is set up and ready to go after normal diff, you can then play the game once through on the hard difficulty.

For me personally, I'd make a few more characters if I didn't have to play cruel diff. As is, I just recycle old ones and wait for skill respecs.

I love cruel. It's the difficulty where any build succeeds, and gets new players hopes up.

Exactly. Its also a way to get your feet wet at minus chaos res and the XP penalty. Or does the OP mean he wants new players to go from the easy way of playing into the hardest with full on chaos res penalty and harsh XP penalty? [/quote]

The easiness of cruel is what's nice, you can blow through most of act 1 grinding a few levels hear n there and do the same in act 2 without cruel and even scaling monster levels a char wouldn't transition smoothly to merc

Yea, I would like to see the number of loops reduced also. Just as a point of order, that's not exactly the same as removing Cruel. It could go like this:

A1 Normal
A2 Normal
A3 Normal
A4 Cruel
A1 Cruel
A2 Merciless
A3 Merciless
A4 Merciless

I did it so there were no difficulty increases in Act 3. No need to face all that with a fresh resist penalty on top =D