Act 4 - Passive Points, Level Cap, Maps oh my!

Before act3 was added there were 4 difficulty levels.
Most of us generally do not expect the level cap to go up or for there to be a higher total of passive rewards so the expectation is that the game would go to two difficulties. My main concern with this is the resistance penalty, I already think going from -20 in cruel to -60 in merciless is too harsh for new players. -8 res per act or something would be better, but then I think it would be best to work some explanation in to the story.

Also remember when they added act3x they reduced the crematorium and solaris by one level each (maybe some other areas got smaller too? I don't recall exactly) so they can always tweak stuff like this to smooth progression. They also have to account for all the other additions to the game like shrines, strong boxes and corrupt areas. Those can potentially add a fair amount of xp. Personally I'd rather the game content end around level 75 and have map levels and difficulty scaled up accordingly.

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bhavv wrote:

I woulnt be surprised if they just Nerf act 1-3 level ranges, and make act 4 max out at level 68.

God I would be so pissed if they do that, I hope you are wrong my friend

When GGG gets all the acts they plan released, what I would want is for the final area of the game to be lv.100, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen :(

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Coal48 wrote:

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bhavv wrote:

I woulnt be surprised if they just Nerf act 1-3 level ranges, and make act 4 max out at level 68.

God I would be so pissed if they do that, I hope you are wrong my friend

When GGG gets all the acts they plan released, what I would want is for the final area of the game to be lv.100, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen :(

Yeah. Might as well prepare yourself to be pissed.

You brought up a lot of interesting questions, ones which GGG is probably trying to address already. I would *really* love to see more passive points.

But really, it's all speculation at this point.

Also I agree, it would suck if they decrease the level of the current areas to make it match up with the current system.

one of the dogmas ggg put up when describing their game in closed beta was to never destroy a player's effort.

that's why on act 4 release neither the level cap will rise nor prefixes and suffixes of rare and magic gear increase. and endgame item stays an endgame item forever.

if there are changes to item properties (they already did that on release) it will be very specific for balance reasons and not general ones.

Way back in the day (it was a Thursday) Chris said that he expected it to take years fo players to reach level 100.

Obviously thats not the case.

The point is that GGG, at least in the past, never expected anyone to have a truely endgame character before at least Act IV. Therefore, I would imagine that it is safe to assume that the level cap and the total number of possible passive points will stay right where it is. My educated guess is that the number of difficulties will indeed drop to two and the passive points you can earn will be redistributed so that all of them from merciless and two more will be able to be earned in Act 4. I cant remember exactly how many that is right now, but I expect that Piety will get the current Dominus reward and Dominus will give a single passive point.

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jdilly23 wrote:

Knowing GGG, access to act 4 will be entirely RNG based.

Perhaps even the entire game.

Players could play a slightly less awesome version of PoE, grinding away for a real PoE drop.

To be honest though, they will probably just dumb down their already trivial content and throw in a few more 1 shot bosses in act 4. keep the tradition going, ya know?

 Knowing some of the history of GGG and their custom game engine, act 4 will be entirely desync driven. So much so that it will drive most of us out for good. Think about it, the act 3.5 zones have much more desync that the previous content, so it's a good bet that act 4 will continue the increase in desync with every new zone. RNG is a deliberate design feature, so GGG could change it any time they desire, but at this point in time it is an integral part of game play (no matter how many hate its overuse), and thus will probably never change. Desync is the unfortunate side effect of a custom game engine created by the founders because, at the time, Unreal 3 or any other commercially available game engine cost megabucks to license, which new startups (indie game companies) don't have.

 On the 120 passive points total, I'm in agreement with others that it will stay the same and over time GGG will keep removing levels of difficulty until we only need to play through once to get to the end game maps and grind for years to reach level 100 or more likely stop from burnout and boredom (the daily grind will grind out playing enthusiasm into dust). So we had 4 levels of difficultly in CB, 3 in OB and act 3, then when act 4 is pushed out in 2015 we'll only have to play through twice, and GGG will redistribute the passive points across act 4 so that 120 will always be the maximum forever. It would be much better for GGG to give us more passive points sooner so that by level 90 we've reached the 120 max and our motivation to grind the last 10 levels is to get freed at level 100, leave the island prison (our exile is over), and retire the character permanently. GGG should also have a grand reward to congratulate us on our perseverance and exhausting amount of physical time sunk into achieving level 100.

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Arrowneous wrote:

 Knowing some of the history of GGG and their custom game engine, act 4 will be entirely desync driven. So much so that it will drive most of us out for good. Think about it, the act 3.5 zones have much more desync that the previous content, so it's a good bet that act 4 will continue the increase in desync with every new zone. RNG is a deliberate design feature, so GGG could change it any time they desire, but at this point in time it is an integral part of game play (no matter how many hate its overuse), and thus will probably never change. Desync is the unfortunate side effect of a custom game engine created by the founders because, at the time, Unreal 3 or any other commercially available game engine cost megabucks to license, which new startups (indie game companies) don't have.

thats absolute nonsense, you really should quit posting things you have no clue about mate.


unreal 3 cost too much money thats why there is desync? You realise the desync is cause by the netcode and the CHOICE to maintain certain mechanics in the game? It has nothing to do with the graphics rendering engine and associated dev tools which is really what you are paying for with unreal, an engine designed for first person shooters and general hard server sync games of this nature.

ARPGs dont use full sync engines like fps games. PoE, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, they are all using non sync, you are almost perminantly desynced in all these games. Could Blizzard not afford Unreal engine either? You get rubber banding in D3, that is desync fixing itself, the reason it is less noticeable is because they cut out layers of the chance to hit mechanics and massively uped the range at which you can hit a mob. They hid desync behind making their combat mechanics shit, because they figured people would prefer a shit game to an inconsistent one. PoE decided to keep proper hit mechanics and ranges at the expense of desync being more noticeable.

Its got absolutely nothing to do with licensing game engines or lack of funds, you would know this if you read the dev manifesto on desync. Act3x zones dont have more desync, thats ridiculous, the entire bit I quoted here is actually ridiculous and so far from fact that you shouldnt be posting it.