Normal, Cruel, Merciless Difficulty Change
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As much as I love this game, I chew my fucking hand off every time I have to play through another difficulty.
Act 4 even though it may not be as long as certain acts is still another act. I feel that you also cannot estimate its length until it has been fully released. ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
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Would you prefer they just made every zone 3 times as big but you only had to go through it once? I think that would be worse. At least this way I feel like I'm making progress as I go.
Guild Leader The Amazon Basin <BASIN>
Play Nice and Show Some Class www.theamazonbasin.com | |
" Actually, yeah, I would prefer one difficulty (though two makes more sense for now) but bigger zones haha. That way I know that once I'm done a specific area I don't HAVE to repeat it unless I want to farm Div Cards that spawn there or I want to level a new character. It seems like less of a mental obstacle to me to know that I won't be doing a repeat loop on a tiny scale, but that I can finish a zone and be done with it for a while (as opposed to finishing a difficulty, rinsing, and repeating within a couple of hours' play) I find Normal kind of boring (too easy, but at least I get lots of skill points quickly and it serves to allow new players to get their feet wet without much challenge), Cruel is basically a mad dash to each boss so I can move on to Merc (and I would happily see Cruel go extinct, as the difficulty really doesn't go up much from Normal), and Merc is kind of better due to increased challenge, but I'm still kind of hustling to get to maps. Last edited by Funkdubious on Jul 3, 2015, 1:55:32 PM
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I do not understand the decision made during the development of act 4, when they decided to shortened (streamlined?) act 1-3 instead of removing cruel. I mean, playing to thru the same content again and again and again is getting old. Hell, the whole idea is old.
If they are hell bent on having several difficulties, the need to add A LOT more random encounters on your way thru Wraeclast. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" Same feelings here. Diablo 2 for instance (yes they have difficulties) but those areas were a LOT bigger than POE maps. I would love one go around of POE so by the time you get to act 4 you would be 60+ Repeating content and areas over and over is not fun tbh. There is nothing rewarding about it. ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ NERF ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
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" Oh you betcha I would. I do not like the three playthrough model. I tolerate it. | |
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yep, playing the game through normal, cruel + merciless difficulties just to get to maps is getting a tad yawn-inducing now.
but i still think there should be a middle (i.e., "cruel") difficulty. so how about this instead: rather than have to play the WHOLE GAME three times... just make further acts (ie, act V onwards, if ever there will be an act V) accessible only in merc difficulty? have 'em as a true alternative to maps...? ooh! 'member when PoE was good and fun? i 'member!
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To be honest, I've been quite content with the "three difficulties" setup. It's something that Diablo 2 got right on the first try. (well, technically second given there was Diablo 1)
I feel a lot of the opposition to it mostly comes out of confusion due to people simply not being used to it... In other words, "It's different from the other new games." Overall, it's a necessary part of the game; sure, some people want to dash straight to the end of the game, but if we didn't have the whole progression, then races would largely be meaningless. And for feeling that it takes too long to get through normal? Well, perhaps you're not racing well enough. If it's a new build or challenge league... You NEED that to really give you a taste of what you're in store for. And if those changes didn't make it different enough to feel new, then perhaps you might not want to be playing that build or league to begin with. As for further acts? Given that, from the looks of it, Act IV pretty much plays out all the available plot points... I highly doubt we'd even see an Act V. The ONLY claim to try and back the suggestion we'd see further acts is all based upon the current presumption that the comic series goes to 10 issues, and with each of the first four being located in the same place as the matching-numbered act, we had a jump to conclusions that therefore the successive comics must ALL foreshadow further acts! This is "never mind" to the fact that in terms of important, tangible locations, (As opposed to the shifting nightmare accessed through maps) we've pretty much just found every such part of Wraeclast. Chances are further issues will, in fact, re-visit existing locations. And as for the extra space for Act IV? Keep in mind that they trimmed excess space from prior acts to free up some room; extraneous parts of Act I that just served as padding were removed. (seriously, who liked The Coves zone anyway? Also weird that it had to share its name with the much-better Coves map) Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster Last edited by ACGIFT on Jul 4, 2015, 2:02:26 AM
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" No, three difficulties is NOT an inherently necessary part of the game. It's more like a way of compensating for a lack of actual content in the game. Back in the days of D2, this was acceptable because of hardware limitations on computers at the time. Now it's understandable that GGG also took this approach given that they were starting out as such a small independent studio and needed to do this in order to be able to release SOMETHING. Eventually though, they can and should be working towards having enough content to not rely on repeating difficulties. And no, it's not just the comic series that makes people think they'll eventually have 10 acts. GGG specifically said that is something they would eventually like to do and that they have content planned out for at least 10 acts already. And that was long before the comics even existed. Whether or not the game will actually survive long enough for them to get there is a different question, but there is good reason to think that this is GGG's goal. As for playing out all the plot points, I also have to disagree. You could just as easily have said that everything seemed to have been played out before once you beat Dominus...or even Piety. There's always room for them to add more. And each new act they add only has to introduce one new plot point in order to lead on to the next act. Doesn't need to be added in right away either, since they could always add a new act which wraps everything up, then if they do decide to work on yet another act, they can toss in a few hints about it in a minor expansion and work from there. | |
" In terms of actual gameplay, beyond around the mid-90s (Diablo 2 came out in 2000) hardware ceased to be any appreciable limitation whatsover. Past then it became purely a graphics issue. There was nothing stopping the game from having as many acts and as much "content" as they wanted. " The reason it's necessary in PoE? Simply put in two words: "difficulty curve." For someone who'd played the game for a long time, it's easy to forget how it was at the beginning, trying to figure everything out. The game gets ENOUGH complaints as it is along the lines of "dropping players in the middle of the ocean and asking them to swim," but the act progression helps ease them in. The reason for repeating acts at higher difficulties is to help illustrate how the difficulty is scaling up: a player will REMEMBER how Act I felt normally, and can see and feel the difference, to better judge how the game is playing. By contrast, if constantly shoving "new content" at them, they will still be trying to figure out the workings of the new content, and never get to seeing the difficulty shift; hence they will often be caught unawares. " I'd like a link to confirm that. I've been looking and asking for one for months and months now, and I've yet to ever run across such a statement. " Reply is in spoilers because, well, it's Act IV spoilers:
Spoiler
No, it's not just a matter of "adding more plot points." Act IV basically just tied up every single loose end in terms of characters already ever mentioned. Kaom, Daresso, Shavronne, Maligaro, Malachai, etc... Every single character mentioned in the lore appears in Act IV, barring unless they had ALREADY died.
With every single character in the lore gone as a result of Act IV, that leaves no others present; all through development even pre-Act III, all these characters were those that had been placed out in the game's lore. And with this act, they've just used them all up. You also failed to address the whole "lack of places to go." The only locations ever mentioned existing that haven't been already shown... Are not shown simply because they are not in Wraeclast. The cataclysm is part of Wraeclast, so there's no point in leaving the continent. The best that could be done to add more areas would NOT allow for specific acts: they would have to resort to adding more in the "nightmare" region, which means it'd be mapping; an example would be Atziri. We're quite liable to see more things like Apex/Abyss, but new acts wouldn't work without ENTIRELY redoing the way the game works... Which for a small-ish, independent studio, is a bit much. Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster Last edited by ACGIFT on Jul 5, 2015, 9:22:58 AM
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