Time to remove Cruel?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

But once you've "learned to play" it's a hindrance.

So just remove it huh? Lol
That's got to be one of the weakest reasons to apply, why not do it to the rest of the game?

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Nephalim wrote:

...you dont need to beat A4 merciless to advance to maps or get all skill points.

But with Ascendancy you'll need to finish Merciless in order to get all 6 sub-class points for your character...

It does look like we're stuck with Cruel at this point, and that's why I think GGG should reconsider my CB2 suggestion of staggering the progression of the three difficulty levels. Acts 3 and 4 are really designed for Cruel and Merciless, there's just no good way to nerf them down into something appropriate for a partially developed character in Normal. Here's how the progression could work:

Normal: Act 1 & 2 - Ending with Vaal Oversoul
Cruel: Act 1, 2, & 3 - Ending with Dominus
Merciless: Act 1, 2, 3, & 4 - Ending with the Awakening

Rather than repeating the same thing three times over, this would give you a real sense of progression through each difficulty, culminating with Act 4 in Merciless where it belongs. Really, isn't Vaal Oversoul a more appropriate gatekeeper to Cruel, and Dominus the ideal gatekeeper to Merciless? Reducing the number of Acts from 12 to 9 would also make leveling a new character quicker and less of a repetitive chore. Of course, changing the choreography this way would require GGG to rebalance the Act levels, but judging from the extensive changes made for The Awakening, that no longer seems like such a big deal.

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RogueMage wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

...you dont need to beat A4 merciless to advance to maps or get all skill points.

But with Ascendancy you'll need to finish Merciless in order to get all 6 sub-class points for your character...

No, you don't. It's an Act III thing, you could even start mapping after doing it.

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RogueMage wrote:

Normal: Act 1 & 2 - Ending with Vaal Oversoul
Cruel: Act 1, 2, & 3 - Ending with Dominus
Merciless: Act 1, 2, 3, & 4 - Ending with the Awakening

Sigh...That idea again. It just fucks new players and it's akward. It doesn't make any sense.

Well I didn't play around much with the nerfed act 4 but when I did play right after the awakening act 4 normal lasted almost as long as act 1-3. Act 4 cruel is the hardest thing up until higher level maps. As you can just skip the harder parts of act 4 merciless since they give no skill points

Just throwing in my reply.

I am a relatively new player, and im on my 4th/5th character and I get burnt out after act 2 of cruel instantly

Its so weird. I just become really tired and never want to play again. Doing the campaign 3 times is so boring its not even funny.

The burnout is so real

Would be pretty rough for players going from 0 to -60% resists in one step. Less time to gear up if you cut cruel as well. Fine in Standard if you have a stash of gear. Not nice otherwise, especially for new players....

Mind you, I'd prefer a finer grained resist penalty anyway. Make it -1% per area, or whatever it takes to smooth it out over Normal/Cruel/Merciless or whatever.

It so annoying to have to do the same thing over and over and over and over... Removing cruel would be a good way to reduce some of the crappiness of this game. Especially when they add a new act and you have to waste hours blowing all your characters through the low level acts just to get the rewards.

I just don't understand why this game doesn't want you to play the game at the appropriate level that your character is.

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Mal_function wrote:

Would be pretty rough for players going from 0 to -60% resists in one step. Less time to gear up if you cut cruel as well. Fine in Standard if you have a stash of gear. Not nice otherwise, especially for new players....

Would it? I mean, Act I, II and the beginning of III are really easy compared to act IV in the previous difficulty.

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Siochan wrote:

I just don't understand why this game doesn't want you to play the game at the appropriate level that your character is.

It's just numbers. If you consider the experience penalty and the difficulty, you are not really penalized for playing lower level areas if the difference is not that big. You don't need a level 85 area for a level 85 character. People like you are the reason the maps have tiers and not levels right now, :P

Just be glad you weren't around for Ruthless difficulty

Hi

I was under the impression each new act=removal of a difficulty level. Act 4 did not do this, so either act 4 is:
A) Too short
B) Not a complete act yet

I concur with the idea of removal of cruel difficulty but only if GGG could maybe finally learn to time the removal of something with the addition of adding something new to the game that compensates, that evens it out; example:like perhaps the removal of cruel for the addition of a Descent/Maelstrum of chaos-like dungeon so high lvl players can stop getting drop jerked via being too low lvl in an area, that's right an alternative to maps at high end lvls 90+.

cheers