Time to remove Cruel?

Kind of disappointed that they've announced that we'll get 2 points for each playthrough on the ascendancy trees. That means Cruel is getting further entrenched in the game and it looks like we're stuck with it.

I think Ascendancy would be a good time (really ANY time would be a good time) to consider eliminating this awkward stage of character development. Things will need to be reworked a bit. Quest rewards would need to be reassigned. But it would make for a far more enjoyable game. The difficulty spikes would be ironed out a bit. There would be a real reward for finishing act IV normal, and not just a breeze through of act I-III in Cruel to get the quests done and some incidental levels.

Dump Cruel.

Sorry in advance if you disagree.

+10^80, so every elemental particle in the whole universe agree.

Not enough content to last 70 levels unfortunately. I agree a4 cruel is a mess in terms of balance though. Really, the story ends at that point because difficult past A4 cruel is pointless since you dont need to beat A4 merciless to advance to maps or get all skill points.

Yes Yes Yes! I believe it is time for cruel to go. Then they could do something as simple as take all the skill points from cruel and give them to a merc Malachai reward.

I could argue for this from many different sides. Instead I will bring up what is the most relevant to me. I wanted to learn everything I could about Elemental Hit. I easily had double digit characters over a very long time testing every possible aspect of the skill. The result was basically asking for them to create Wild Strike XD.

I like to learn, my time is this game is spent using things other people throw away and try to find uses for them. The length and difficulty triples or even quadruples the time it takes me to level now, resulting in me learning at a much slower rate.

I am glad I did that when I could. It is no longer feasible to do that kind of mechanics dissection anymore. Even if I wanted to uncover absolutely everything about a gem or mechanic it would be so time consuming that would be the only thing I could learn about.

I fear. I fear GGG wants this. The drastic difficulty spikes slows down the rate at which testing can be done immensely resulting in it requiring a longer time many ridiculous builds can be discovered. I fear GGG thinks this. I fear it because I think is wrong, instead of slowing down creativity is bottlenecks creativity resulting in a very board and unhappy player base.

I love this game, I will play it as long as I can. But cheesing through Cruel has gotten old a long time ago, and I know that will be the thing that eventually pushes me to stop playing.

That would be awesome

+1. Cruel needs to go

I agree, but I want to wait until Act 5, or a content update after Ascendancy.

I like cruel :/

Weird you are saying this (of all people) Shagsbeard (because it would make the pre map part of the game shorter) but I agree. I dislike Cruel, it's more of the same, but you are not near the end to make it palatable as Merciless. The reason I'm not completely hooked on the game.

It makes sense, though. Ascendancy makes the leveling process longer and more involved (that's a good way to make leveling more relevant, but it doesn't adress the burn out yet).

That being said, I don't think it'll happen with Ascendancy. Too big of a change, also, they need a little more content before it becomes feasible without too much filler (although it would be nice to have more areas as pre Awakening if that happens). We'll have to wait for Act V.

If there are alternate leveling methods too, the better.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

I like cruel :/

Detail? I hear some like Cruel because of the character progression, but I've never heard of someone saying they like to repeat the acts so much.

Nice Feedback Shags

Kappa