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

I am bumping my thread because with the new patch, and the fact that I have reached high level and stuff, I am starting to get the hang of it all.

As a reminder to everyone: This thread is a mature thread, has been created almost a year ago and is mostly filled with mature posts. It continues to live on because of the awesomeness of this community so please, be polite and considerate in your posts. Thank you.

@Tinari

Sad. Well, I can tell you have some sort of dedication problem. :P What you wish for is actually what you got in Diablo II at some point, when power-acting and power-leveling was at its peak. Unfortunately, it's only partially possible in this game so far.

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On to the subject at hand: With the new patches that came through, and the patches to come in the future, arises the need for players to try new builds.

In order to stay within the topic, here is the issue: A lot of players will eventually want to test out new content as it comes through. Those players have went through the game countless of times already. They do not find it challenging anymore, they simply want the levels they need to start testing stuff.

That is when a new form of leveling comes in. In Diablo II there was power-leveling and power-acting, which was a sort of glitch enabling player to skip most of the content in order to reach end-game zones at early levels and gain insane amounts of experience in minutes. There were many problems with that sort of behavior but the most interesting for us right now is this: It didn't require any skill, or dedication. A friend kills all the last bosses and that's it, you're ready to level from 1 to 75 in a few hours.

What I propose is that, there should be a way for players who have the dedication and will for it, to level much faster than the game originally intended for.

- A league, in which everything is much harder, but much more rewarding XP-wise.

- maps for low-level players, which can only drop in high-level areas (meaning you need to have first completed the game in order to access those maps). Those maps would reward XP at a much higher rate than clearing the game.

In earlier posts of mine in this thread I had ideas about timed dungeons and all, I don't know if they would still apply as the game changed a bit since then, and I wasn't aware of how things were done in this game either at that point.

Anyway, one thing I have observed is that changes made to the leveling progression have been made fairly recently, most notably a change when transitioning from Closed Beta to Open Beta: Players have to reach a certain level before completing Normal and getting into Cruel, or completing Cruel before getting into Merciless. My point here is that a dedicated, skilled player could work his way into Merciless even being level 1, and then proceed to get XP from worthy zones and level up very fast (10 hours for level 50-60).

I think this change defeated the purpose of being dedicated and skilled toward achieving high level quickly; in other words, it diminished the "reward" value of it, thus diminishing the incentive of actually doing it in the first place.

So, what I think of all this: 9 months ago I was wondering if there was power-leveling in this game, and I still wish there were some ways to level up faster than intended. But right now, it seems to me like the current ways to level up faster still consist of running through the main story, which is what killed me in games like Diablo III, and Torchlight II.
What I actually enjoyed in Diablo II was the fact that I completed act 3 about 3 times in my whole years of playing Diablo II, and that was fine enough for me. Didn't like that act, so I had the option of skipping it.

tl;rd: paragraph above, maybe...

I play HC , my 74 just died and i have a bunch of 20-30s ive started. Its already getting boring doing these quests. I doubt i will play this game much longer if i have to replay the same boring content to get to endgame. Too boring , who cares. Farming endgame content is the only thing fun to many people.

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ketaminedub wrote:

I play HC , my 74 just died and i have a bunch of 20-30s ive started. Its already getting boring doing these quests. I doubt i will play this game much longer if i have to replay the same boring content to get to endgame. Too boring , who cares. Farming endgame content is the only thing fun to many people.

If you don't want to deal with the consequences of death in HC (i.e. starting from scratch with a new character and running through all the content again), why bother with HC at all? Just curious.

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ketaminedub wrote:

I play HC , my 74 just died and i have a bunch of 20-30s ive started. Its already getting boring doing these quests. I doubt i will play this game much longer if i have to replay the same boring content to get to endgame. Too boring , who cares. Farming endgame content is the only thing fun to many people.

Well don't play HC play normal league. This way u won't have to bitch about boring content every time u die. Join us mortals and have fun without being super-pro-mega-godlike skill-uber-player ;)

While i'm sure there will be PL methods uncovered sooner or later, i always had trouble with the logic "i don't like doing the same content over and over so let me farm the same maps over and over for max XP". Thats just a bit idk, contradictive.

Guess years of "Tristram -> Tombs ->Normal Baal -> NM Baal -> Hell Baal ad infinitum" kinda wore me out of that kind of gameplay.

@daxtream

I read your text carefully and what i gathered are two different things. First you want to powerlevel. Second you want to skip acts you don´t like.

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My point here is that a dedicated, skilled player could work his way into Merciless even being level 1, and then proceed to get XP from worthy zones and level up very fast (10 hours for level 50-60).

Since you can powerlevel if you:

a) know the acts and difficultys very well
b) now your build and the progession milestones
c) how you can sustain your gear and abuse the game

then the time limit you gave is approximately the time a "dedicated, skilled" player nowadays need for the target you saying.

But what will never happen is that you are able to skip complete difficulties or acts. That´s because if one would be able to do so people would abuse it with free accounts for boosts.

He just want to faceroll all the game until 100!
and if developers give this for you, the game will become boring

Maybe if have a "teste server" that we can test our builds... that will be great!

Honestly, I didn't mind D3. It was a lot of fun when I first started, they just didn't manage the game or the gamers well.
I would advise against power leveling, it's really not in the nature of this game, pick something that's challenging and see how far it takes you.

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Vicao wrote:

He just want to faceroll all the game until 100!
and if developers give this for you, the game will become boring

Maybe if have a "teste server" that we can test our builds... that will be great!

I had planned on letting this thread die out, but such a reply really proves that you didn't read anything in the thread, and therefore, that a few more people need to be enlightened on the subject.

I asked this power-acting/power-leveling question almost a year ago btw, back when almost nobody played this game.

To readers: Reading this thread is long, very long. There isn't much more that can be said on the subject, so if you have something to say, make sure you have read the thread. What you were going to say has probably been covered already in this thread. ESPECIALLY on the delicate subject of power-level being too easy.

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Warhaul wrote:

Honestly, I didn't mind D3. It was a lot of fun when I first started, they just didn't manage the game or the gamers well.
I would advise against power leveling, it's really not in the nature of this game, pick something that's challenging and see how far it takes you.

Except a lot of the fun doesn't even start until lvl 24.

Chain, Spell Totem, Increased AOE, Conc Effect, tons of auras. All of them are locked out until at least Act 3, if you're speeding through content. Hell, I mostly finish Normal at lvl 30 now, which means I've spent 1/3 of the game just trying to hit the fun stuff.

It's boring, especially when this is the 9th alt I've had to run up to at least lvl 31 before I can even enjoy my build.

Just add a -act5 command of something like in D2. Normal is only enjoyable the first 1-2 times through. After that, it's just pointless grind, not even the fun ones like unique gear hunting.