What about; locked difficulties till completing the previous one?!

i would realy like to see u playing D2 and starting on nightmare or even hell with ur lvl 1 char :)
U have to start somewhere.

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Narfi wrote:

i would realy like to see u playing D2 and starting on nightmare or even hell with ur lvl 1 char :)
U have to start somewhere.

I completely agree. The difficulty should interact with your personal playing skill and determine that some difficulties are going to be too hard... and yes you definitely have to start somewhere.

The problem comes in when points start to overlap. Let's say you are in difficulty 2 part 6 out of 8. You've already played through difficulty 1, so you know what is going to happen.

This player, with enough skill, could probably skip to difficulty 3 at this point. Likewise, a player with enough skill could possibly skip directly from the beginning of difficulty 1 to the beginning of difficulty 2... and I see no problem with it.

Many gamers don't want their first playthrough to be on easy-street. They want to work and strategize for their first win, because honestly, the first playthrough is the only one that REALLY matters... the rest is item/character building on the infinite treadmill.

FK! someone posted before me.

well but what realy changed in D2?
Its mainly the higher lvl that makes it a bit harder.
Be it Normal or Hell, monsters still had the same abilitys, and i think on the start it didnt even had immunitys (not sure though, long time ago^^)

So u did not realy had a difficulty change in D2, u just played through the same areas once again with a higher lvl. Nothing else realy changed.

if ur able to skip it, well as a pure single player game that might work, but in an online game it opens possibilitys that the developers might not want to happen.
(ppl rushing u through end game content or super fast leveling with lvl 1 in high lvl areas)
Ofcourse there are solutions for that but they might come with alot of extra work, and if someone realy feels to strong for part 6 of 8, he might be able to rush through it till he finds a place where its more challanging.
depends a bit on the game/quest structure though.

You don't level fast in levels too high level for you most probably. Just like in d2

that u dont know for PoE, i can remember D2 (years ago though) where it was common to let ur new toon get rushed through to hell cow lvl and then get lvl 80-90 in very short time :)

There are many ways to stop power leveling.. usually by capping max xp per kill and attenuating xp per kill by party level.

However, those factors have nothing to do with the germane topic... despite the fact that it was brought into conversation as if they were related.

Your character would still only have access to the portions you've personally unlocked... even if you skip parts of a difficulty the parts you skipped would still be locked... and it'll always be possible to have a better/higher player run you through even if you get low to no xp for it.

So really I don't see the point. At the end of the day if I don't want to play the game in easy mode, they are going to force me to ruin the immersive gameplay experience (of my first run through) by power gaming past the first difficulty so it's hard enough to even bother playing.

wouldn't a new character get raped in a nightmare. If you charecter is really that 1337 then im sure you can rush though the difficulty fast enough.

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tpapp157 wrote:

This sort of difficulty structure was definitely confirmed by Chris long ago. I guess no one ever made a big deal out of explicitly stating because it was assumed. I'm perfectly fine with locking higher difficulties until you beat the previous ones.

right;) nothing more to write down:D

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Rustychops wrote:

If you charecter is really that 1337 then im sure you can rush though the difficulty fast enough.

Yeah that was the exact point I was making, and it's not a good thing.