Is there power-leveling/power-acting in this game?

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simonizor wrote:

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Daxtreme wrote:

You obviously look like you are being sarcastic to me.

Anybody who played D2 for more than a month knows that leveling is not important, it's something on the side and that's what people liked. Yet, you could always level, because level 99 was really far away!

If you're not being sarcastic then you sound like a kid, no offense. :P

Uh, I don't know how you played, but ALL of my friends created characters, got them rushed, and then leveled them to level 80 first thing. Leveling up to be able to use the gear planned for that character was pretty much first priority after getting rushed through the game.

Dude you agree to him. Rushing is not leveling. It's being leveled. What you say simonizor is that your friends ARE doing power leveling. If they would have leveled accordig to how it's meant, they would need 100x the time.

this topic is tldr, so:

1. stuff like D2 "blood runs" or "baal runs" doesn't work here. some people try things like "fellshrine farming" but it's nowhere close to what D2 used to be. the main difference is that you need to be physically (well... virtually) close to other people while they kill mobs to get exp. it's not possible for the group to split and run in different directions and still get exp as a group.

2. power leveling works here.

i would prefer if they changed the exp rule, since i don't have much time to play anymore and i'm likely never going to get to end game, but still this game is much fun.

Greetings again people, you might (not) remember me from 8 months ago when I created this thread. :P

I still think this thread covers a pertinent subject. My opinion on the matter has been brought up by another user earlier in this thread. Here is my subject:

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DeF46 wrote:

"Are there ways to level up faster for those players who have the skill or will to do so?"

To all the others saying I was a noob by getting power-leveled in Diablo 2 ten years ago, or those telling me to go back to WoW: this community doesn't need you. We are having a mature discussion here. Thank you.

On to the subject at hand: I am still quite new to this game, but thoroughly enjoy it. There is but a simple thing I fear: clearing previously-cleared content in a loop. Let's take diablo 3 for example: you play through normal, nightmare, hell, inferno, while clearing the same story 4 times per character. When you play hardcore like I do, that adds up to a ridiculous amount of clears just to get the hang of the game. Clearing the same maps, in the same order, killing the same bosses... It doesn't work, I want variety, randomness.

Torchlight II introduced the maps. That was a fine idea, except that torchlight was client-side... Anybody can cheat, so the game becomes useless as a competitive medium. But the maps were nice. Randomness, loot, monsters, good. But ultimately something happened: if I wanted a new character and didn't want to go through the story yet again (Newgame +, Newgame ++, etc.) well then I was screwed. I had to play through the story again, and I simply don't enjoy it in the long run. 1, 2, 3 characters, fines. 10? no thanks... Same problem with Diablo 3: I don't want to clear previously cleared content for the sake of leveling. When I was playing Diablo II years ago, I ran through act 3 what... 3 times in my whole life? I played Diablo II for years! And that was totally what I wanted: not clearing that long (and imo boring) act three.

Now I'm not saying this game should feature a Cow level bringing you from level 1 to 70 in 3 hours by standing still. That's not the point, it's too easy, too boring, too quick. What I'm bringing up is the quote above: "Is there a way to level up faster for those who have the skill or will to do so?"

Or, one could say, *should* there be a way to level faster for those who have the skill or will to do so?

In my opinion, the answer is yes.

One thing I want to point out is that when I ask former players of Diablo II what they truly liked about the game, what came out on top was that you really could help your friends out in Diablo II. Power-level them, run bosses for them for the XP, the like. Let's say I am playing Torchlight II. My friend is on New Game ++, I'm on New Game ++++, we can't play together, we can't revert to other game modes... no social interaction. The only way for me to "help"/interact with him is to either start a new character with him (and clear the story yet again) or give him items. Items which he can cheat for himself anyway.

Let's say I am playing Diablo III. I can "help" my friends best by giving them items (especially giving them items), or playing with a same level character as them. If I play with them and I'm much higher level, I won't enjoy it. I won't enjoy it because there's nothing in it for me, we are clearing the same story I'm wayyyyyy too tired to clear already anyway, and it won't help him much anyway so I should just stop right now. It's boring and inefficient for both of us, I'm leeching his XP, and I'm getting nothing out of it. So, in the 2 games stated above, the only way to have fun with a friend is to be around his level.

Let's say now that I am playing Diablo II. We want to play together, so the higher level character makes a baal run or something like that, and his friend will level up much faster because of that. Sure, the higher level character gets pretty much nothing out of that, but he will eventually get repaid by his friend who will later, in return, run him the same way for faster levels. It's not exactly balanced because the lower-level character isn't clearing content he should be able to, but it is truly what I believe players enjoyed the most out of Diablo II when I ask them what they remember best about it and why they liked Diablo II more than 99% of the games out there: The interaction between players above all.

Any player of any level could interact with any player of any level without significant drawbacks. Games mentioned above will either majorly reduce the XP of the lower level character (and obviously give none to the high-level one), or straight-down interdict the higher level character from playing with the lower-level character (torchlight 2). And that is bad. Good for balance, bad for social interactions. No one likes to feel useless, especially when your high-level character is supposed to be an all-powerful bad-ass one-shotting everything!

So, that being said, here are some challenging ideas I have seen in this thread so far, or just thought about right now (if some of those are already in the game, I apologize for my lack of knowledge. I am still new). Take into consideration that in all those ideas, help from a higher-level character wouldn't result in any sort of drawback whatsoever for the lower level character. Obviously this presents no gain for the higher level character, but did it present any gain for him in Diablo II...? Not really. A horde of players still did it though, for the social interactions it provided!

1 ---- Have maps for lower level characters which could be equivalent to the level-appropriate content of the character's level, yet be more rewarding in XP. For example, monsters could give double XP but drop absolutely zero items. And bosses could give 4x, 8x, 12x XP even. Higher level characters would no doubt help clear them and it would not provide much of a challenge, but it would still make up for some good variation to the story mode, and give better XP overall.
Idea extensions:
- Restrict it to a certain number of uses per day.
- Make some of them solo-only for dedicated players who don't mind a good challenge.

2 ---- Have timed dungeons, where if you clear the dungeon in time, you get a huge XP boost. It would require multiple people who split up the clearing. If you don't clear it in time, you get normal XP for clearing the monsters, or even no XP at all. Obviously higher level characters have an edge here, but the point is that a high-level character couldn't even clear it solo, because it's just too huge for 1 person to clear alone. It has to be cleared with several people, the level 80 can't be everywhere at once. Obviously in this sort of dungeon the XP would be shared globally. But, like the mod suggests, sitting at the entrance AFK'ing and watching game of thrones won't help clear the dungeon. You have to be actively participating as well because your level 80 friend can't clear it for you alone. He just doesn't have the time. Seeing as it would require several players to clear successfully, those timed dungeons would provide the most XP out of the options.
Idea extensions:
- Like in Diablo 3, make those timed dungeons random spawns in group encounters.
- Make the timed dungeon separated in different tiers, the first tiers being quite easy but less rewarding, the later tiers being harder but more rewarding.

3 ---- Create a sort of "survival" mode. Games like Killing Floor come to mind. You have to survive against waves of mobs. The more waves you survive the better the rewards.
Idea Extensions:
- You could choose the number of waves at the beginning, for a reward already decided at that point. Optional: Solo only? ok, better rewards! Party? Ok, less rewards, but more chance of survival!
- There could be objectives throughout the mission that help your chances of survival. That would address the issue of having a high-level character destroying everything in sight. While he goes for the objective, somebody has to stay behind and protect what needs protecting! You can't have somebody sit AFK and wait for XP that way.

Those suggestions aim to add diversity to the game, drawing the gameplay off the main plot and repetitive clearings of it, and provide players with opportunities to level up much faster than playing through the main scenario. Optionally, those challenges could be only available to those who have already cleared the game/have achieved a certain level already.

In an utopic world, those things require both skill and dedication to complete. Realistically speaking though, a level 80 character could clear, or help clear, those out pretty easily and single-handedly. Still, as I stated earlier before this list, the idea is to let high-level characters help their lower-level friends, which other Action RPGs that came out in the last year failed miserably at doing. There's just no way a level 60 paragon 30 Diablo III character can genuinely help his level 25 friends apart from either playing with them and reduce their XP intake (which virtually no one will do anyway), logging on a character of their level, or give them some gear. Same (and even worse) for Torchlight II.

In the end, there is no significant action that can be done by higher level characters to genuinely help their low level friends in those games. All you are doing is leeching their XP and wasting your time. This was not the case in Diablo II, and this is exactly what all this thread is about. A lot of people complained that power-leveling wasn't intended, was cheap, was stupid, imbalanced, etc. But it still did achieve 2 things:

one: it prevented players from getting bored with the story mode by clearing it repetitively.

two: it let friends play together, at all levels, unconditionally.

The second point is, in my opinion, the strongest of the two, and has been largely ignored in recent games of the genre, and is, in case you still haven't noticed yet, the main subject of this excessively long post. You could always, always help someone with a high-level character in Diablo II, and it wouldn't be for nothing. You didn't really leech XP off him, you could make him advance into the game story much faster than intended, you could host XP runs for him, and thus accelerating his leveling speed, name it. Plus the thing you can already do in D3 and TL2: give him some gear, obviously.

The point here is that, even if you have the help of a higher-level character... "that's cheap" so what? The point of a game is to play, ideally with your friends/people you know and care about, and I think that the complexity of Path of Exile makes it so that some random level 70 character can be weaker than a well-constructed and well-geared level 50 character. The same worked in Diablo II. You'd see level 40-50 twinks epic-geared with awesome gear take on level 70 average players and utterly destroy them. So level isn't that much of an indicator in skill-based games. What matters is the player.

Sure, player A could have gotten to level 50 much faster than player B could have, who is mostly playing alone. But it required the help of Player C, who is level 80, and should be doing other things. But no, he chose to help his friend level up instead of farming for epic gear. Why should that be considered bad for the game...?

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TL;DR There is no significant action that can be done by a higher-level character to genuinely help his low level friends in action RPGs these days, apart from blatantly giving them items. All you are doing is leeching their XP and wasting your time. This was not the case in Diablo II, and this is exactly what all this thread is about. Power-leveling in Diablo II did 2 things: one: Prevented players from getting bored with the story mode. two: Let friends play together, unconditionally, and thus, ignoring level differences. It provided much-needed friendly interactions. There were drawbacks though, but this thread is about helping to find solutions.

That all being said, I think it's funny how helping someone leveling from 1 to xx is seen as "cheap" and has never been possible in any game since Diablo II, yet giving someone dozens of unique/rare/epic items is legit and has been possible in every game since Diablo II...

Which one of the two gives the most unfair advantage to the player...? ;)

@Charan: Exactly. I wouldn't have replied to this thread so many times throughout the months without this community. It's something.

I miss power leveling as well. I don't like the combat in this game enough to reroll like I did in D2.

I wouldn't mind getting XP bonuses on alts after you achieve something on your main.

ARPGs are about grinding gear not levels.

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Daxtreme wrote:

> Have heard people bragging they are lvl 60 + on D3

You use image boards. I can tell because of the use of >. The use of Greentext is archaic outside of image boards though, I'd suggest not doing that and properly using quotes so we can follow your points easier. <3 (I use image boards too btw, so that isn't a bias.)

I too get very tired of the way ARPG's, and MMO's, and any game with leveling, makes it difficult if not impossible to play with friends that are higher or lower then your level.

Hmm, I haven't heard of any penalty in this game which makes you lose experience if there is a higher-level player in the area with you. It's just that they wouldn't be getting any exp.

That aside, it's possible to get to high levels relatively quickly if you know what you're doing. The idea is to get to certain best farming areas as quickly as possible (so that you're at the minimal level when you don't get reduced exp from them) and then farm in them via PuGs. That way you level very quickly. You can also do all of the quests you can't solo quickly via PuGs. Personally I enjoy growing my characters solo through normal and sometimes cruel, but especially on merciless I just do it like that and it's very quick.

For example, take a look at this video, it explains the strategies used in 3-hour races but they're also applicable to regular leveling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1VyUADEZLM

The best farming areas are the Ledge in act 1, Fellshrine Ruins in act 2 and the Docks in act 3. You can see here for example what are the minimal and maximal levels that you get full exp on them, but it's of course always better to be on the lower end of the band than on the higher.

As im aware the very good players have very fast ways of hitting 60+ pretty quickly. Obviously they wont go revealing their secretes to the public however. I bet by this time next year people will have found the perfect way to rush characters to "the end game" in 6-10 hours or so. Im sure people do that now infact.. Though only a small number.

LOL another person who wants to level easy ..

If everyone who played paid for the game, then perhaps the developers wouldn't have to think too much about its longevity, but since it is free to play, the devs need to keep you playing long enough to get invested in your character and be tempted to use the micro transaction store. They're hoping you will stick around for years and years, not just Baal run a few characters and move on.

You can powerlevel pretty easily in this game, key aspects tend to be high movement speed, people giving you TPs to efficient xping zones and killing major bosses for you(they tend to take a while and don't reward you much xp wise) and using certain gear combinations to increase your killing speed a lot, such as +level to gems items on spells(or spell scaling abilities like poison arrow), flat damage and low level 5Ls.