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

the game isn´t finished, thats why chris write down this levels.. in the release they look different. for example in hard from level 1-36,2nd 37-50,3rd 51-75, last difficult 76-100... its the current balance

All monsters (and loot) in the final difficulty scale to your level (as opposed to the other difficulties where each area is locked to a specific level).

Since the third (and briefly mentioned fourth) act won't be included in 0.8, I think the leveling progression is thrown off. I imagine it will be something much more even once all the acts and quests are included with about 25-30 levels per difficulty.

About lvl scaling on final diff it's official or just your wild guess?

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Chris wrote:

The current plan is that all the monsters in the fourth difficulty are the same level.
...
The goal behind making them all the same level in the final difficulty is that then the end game consists of our entire content set, rather than just the level leading to a single boss.
...
http://pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/544/highlight/third+difficulty/page/2#p8980

Not exactly what you were asking but I know Chris mentioned it at some point.

I think you've misunderstood tpapp, that just means that all the monsters in the final difficulty will be around the same level, as opposed to increasing in level from beginning to end. So act 1 monsters will be the same level as monsters in the final area.
It doesn't mean that monsters will scale to your level.

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Malice wrote:

It doesn't mean that monsters will scale to your level.

I realize that. Which is why I said this:

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tpapp157 wrote:

Not exactly what you were asking but I know Chris mentioned it at some point.

Really though it'd be stupid if they didn't scale to your level. You're going to come out of the third difficulty somewhere around level 80. Do you really expect to still be fighting level 80 monsters on the fourth difficulty even when you're level 100?

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tpapp157 wrote:

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Malice wrote:

It doesn't mean that monsters will scale to your level.

I realize that. Which is why I said this:

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tpapp157 wrote:

Not exactly what you were asking but I know Chris mentioned it at some point.

Really though it'd be stupid if they didn't scale to your level. You're going to come out of the third difficulty somewhere around level 80. Do you really expect to still be fighting level 80 monsters on the fourth difficulty even when you're level 100?

They can't really scale to your level cause that would mean players could just be rushed to the final difficulty level and actually play there at low levels. Also, it would make party play more difficult as you could have players with large lvl differences.

We don't know for sure what level we'll be when we reach the 4th difficulty. It could be that all monsters will be like lvl 95 or something.

Got a bad feeling it's gonna be exploited heavily.
Either to get easier to some areas (bosses) or to get better drops or to powerlvl.
Depends on how other things like drop chances etc will be handled.

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tpapp157 wrote:

Really though it'd be stupid if they didn't scale to your level.

It could be the other way around actually.
Say you are 80lvl and you have some fancy end-game stuff on you, you wouldn't find much better so as you advance further game will be harder significantly since you could only boost probably only passive skills (gems could be on their final lvl) but monster power (hp/dmg or even resistances) will increase like 15% from 80 till late 99.
I like hard end game but you know you have to feel that your char is more powerful as he lvlup not the opposite. That drives ppl to play that one more hour or just to make that one more run before they go sleep :>

Imo it's better to put some lvl restrictions before you could play on final diff.
Like 70.
And make all mosters 95-100 without lvl scaling.

i think the dev´s know what they do:P