Ability to start in Merciless?

I searched and could only find guides/questions how to get to merciless relatively fast, sorry if I overlooked a similar topic.

Background:
This game has a LOT of builds possibilities, almost endless. I love making weird builds not going by guides. All self found (mostly crap) gear and figure out the passives thanks to the ability to search the online passive tree (and POEbuilder.com).
But the game is quite repetitive. 3 small acts that take roughly 3-10 hours to solo (quicker if in a party). Then each act repeated 2 additional times. And TBH, I don't really find endgame maps that rewarding/fun. Act 1 is probably my favorite place.
So despite endless variety of gear, passives and gems, the gameplay (I don't PVP) gets pretty old.

Idea (3 possible ideas):
[1]
Once you beat the game once (all 3 difficulties, all side quests like Library and White Beast), a new option in character creation should be unlocked. Create a level 60 (maybe 50) character in act1 merciless with all possible passives ready to spend. Kinda like the level 28 PVP-only character. Make them atleast play through the game once with the new character, thus having them start in act 1. You can skip the repetition, just play through once.

If you think a penalty should be applied for such a thing... maybe to let people know you 'cheated' to where you are, some title/symbol could be applied to your name above your character. Or take away a couple of passives as a penalty.

[2]
Same as above but with no penalties mentioned above. Instead, for every character that defeats the last boss (side quests optional) in merciless, you can create 1 character who's level 60 in merciless Act 1. Once you create that character, the option goes away until you start a new level 1 character and go all the way through again.

This method would prevent a flood of level 60's from constantly being created. As an endgame reward, you can create ONE high level character until you play through again. And if you play through with multiple level 1's, it should stack up. Play the game 3 times from level 1-endgame, you now can make 3 level 60's and play through merciless.


[3]
A temporary 1-3 day character.
You get a level 60 (or maybe higher since its temp. Maybe level 80?) for 1-3 days, starting in Act 3 Merciless. You can test the build you want. Spend the points, gear up, do some runs, decide if you like it. If you don't, no time wasted. If you do, you can play through and copy that build with a real character.
Maybe some limits like: Not able to use maps, to vaal areas, no Merciless Dominus, can only public PVP. Maybe you can't even choose a name, it'll be a generated name like Ag38r2489b211.

This method wouldn't solve the issue of repetition, but would let you plan ahead without wasting time (finding out your build sucks, really sucks).

..

Do any (or all) of these sound like possible ideas?
I like the game, not the repetition. Sometimes I just want to test a build I have an idea and basic gear for but not spend 2-4+ weeks getting to level 50 or 60 (not everyone can play all day, everyday).

There is some repetition, but it does go pretty fast. They say when they have 10 Acts that they won't really have the same need for repeating acts on harder difficulties.

A comparison to one of the things you mention can be seen in Wizardry Online. It was a hardcore game, where each death had a chance of being permanent. However, after some level you could create new characters that could start at level 20. So there was some persisted progress in that you didn't have to start back at level 1.

However, to be completely honest, as long as leveling is fast like Diablo, and not slow like an MMO, then I'm not sure how much real need there is to allow one to skip levels.

Another advantage of the repetition is that you can try it once and learn it in a manner that progressively ramps up the difficulty.


Moreover, if you had only a single difficulty, you'd end up with more of a harder Rouge-Like game, where you start over after loosing to some newly encountered content (if playing hardcore.) But then again, many rouge-like games do quite well for themselves.


There was also some speculation that with Act 4 they could drop to 2 difficulties, but last I heard they weren't sure they were yet ready for it; that is just didn't quite feel right. I guess We'll see if it happens.

I've heard they plan on releasing 1 act maybe every 2 years. so 10 acts (you might have been exaggerating?) will be a few more years :P
But I also heard they want to make the game only 1 difficulty, way in the future. Maybe when there is 5 or 6 or so acts.

Yes, the leveling is fast, if you can dedicate the time. Getting to level 30 takes me ~10 hours. Getting to 60+ starts take a lot longer, the curve seems to get steep around 30.
I have a friend who can only play once or twice a week for a couple hours each, but he really does like the game. But making progress and trying new builds sucks. He has 2 characters, 1 at end game. Spending several months grinding the same areas (but slightly harder) kinda kills it for him and other casuals.
If it's not as steep of an exp curve as most mmo's (POE isn't an MMO) why not have something like this to help boost a casual gamer to the higher levels after he did it all before? Penalties could be applied, or not. See the above stuff.

"However, to be completely honest, as long as leveling is fast like Diablo"
Diablo LOD's leveling was faster :P atleast until it was nerfed in like.. 1.12(? I stopped at 1.10. made 1 or 2 more characters for memories to checkup on the game)?. Get rushed to Hell (~1 hour) and then do Cows until 60 (~2 hours) then do baal and/or cows until bored (level 80 in a couple more hours). Get your full character in 1-3 days at a 'casual' amount of play time.

POE is def. better than an MMO, but IMO it could be improved a bit.