Solving the act 4, 5, 6 dilemma and Cruel difficulty

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

you are not testing any balance/player behaviour by letting ppl crush content with over level characters... its literally a place holder

But its still better than letting people just level up for free.

its not better if you have an issue with releasing and testing new content. cruel is practically free, i don't think anyone here finds it challenging. so just let us run endless ledge to close the gap, it will remove the dillema of what to do after act 4,5 when they come out, and trust me ppl looooove endless ledge

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

its not better if you have an issue with releasing and testing new content. cruel is practically free, i don't think anyone here finds it challenging. so just let us run endless ledge to close the gap, it will remove the dillema of what to do after act 4,5 when they come out, and trust me ppl looooove endless ledge

Or have people test the Acts twice for twice the chance of finding bugs. Again, beta is meant for testing and breaking the game as much as possible.

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

its not better if you have an issue with releasing and testing new content. cruel is practically free, i don't think anyone here finds it challenging. so just let us run endless ledge to close the gap, it will remove the dillema of what to do after act 4,5 when they come out, and trust me ppl looooove endless ledge

Or have people test the Acts twice for twice the chance of finding bugs. Again, beta is meant for testing and breaking the game as much as possible.

yah i'm not gonna play loopty-loops with you here:

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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Khathuluu#7116 wrote:

@MEITTI#3999 So repeating acts in "cruel difficulty" is your understanding of "normal leveling flow"

More normal than players skipping leveling altogether. Beta testing is not just bug crushing, its also adjusting the overall game balance based on player behaviour during the game. If you want to play a game where you actually can skip right to the end, just play Diablo 4.

devs stated they want to release new acts as they come they just have an issue what players should do after.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

devs stated they want to release new acts as they come they just have an issue what players should do after.

And where do you think the devs get more useful player data from? People redoing placeholder Acts or people doing endless Ledge? The answer is placeholder Acts.

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

devs stated they want to release new acts as they come they just have an issue what players should do after.

And where do you think the devs get more useful player data from? People redoing placeholder Acts or people doing endless Ledge? The answer is placeholder Acts.

right except they said implementing these transitions is problematic for them. personally idgaf how they solve that gap, but acts should drop as soon as they are ready, so w//e they find easier on their end im gucci with

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

right except they said implementing these transitions is problematic for them. personally idgaf how they solve that gap, but acts should drop as soon as they are ready, so w//e they find easier on their end im gucci with

I wasn't arguing they shouldn't come out fast. I was arguing that giving players the ability to get free levels so they can skip straight to maps is silly.

Ok gents, we clearly have different opinions and that's all fine.

MEITTI#3999 is clearly in the camp that favours the campaign and likes redoing it, nothing wrong with that. I prefer getting to the endgame and believe that the most valuable feedback for the devs is the endgame (that's literally why they shifted course a few months back and decided to release EA with some endgame instead of focusing on finishing the remaining acts... their words, not mine).

The campaign should absolutely be polished and it surely will, but it's not what will keep players sinking hundreds, thousands of hours into this game... the exact same way how PoE1 campaign isn't what the game is really about. Anyway, different opinions, all good.

GGG will anyway do whatever they want to do, but I still stand by my suggested solution and I don't believe it's taking away anything from the experience. If anything, it should make GGG's life simpler (from a technical point of view) and it gets more people to actually try out the endgame sooner and help test the parts where the real complexity lies that requires fine-tuning and balancing.

What Cruel does is allow them to balance the XP, gear, and both player/enemy damage/defense numbers for content that is not yet ready. Once they release Act 4, characters should already be mostly balanced for that content, and enemies will be easier to balance because of 4existing data from Cruel Act 1. Skipping straight from Act 3 (or Act 4) to Maps eliminates all of that data, making them have to rebalance every time a new Act is released. That data is also useful for introducing new enemies, new weapons, new skill gems, etc. in a somewhat balanced state. There's a huge amount of data that's useful from the temporary Cruel Acts beyond just forcing players to replay them.

Plus, how do you grant a free set of gear for every build? How do you account for hybrid builds? Just because someone is playing a Witch doesn't mean they are using a Staff or Wand. Case in point, I have a Witch with a Bow; I also have a Ranger with Minions (gotta get my Blood Raven on LOL).

Personally, my solution to this problem would be drop the Cruel Act that the Campaign Act is replacing. So Act 4 kills Act 1 Cruel, Act 5 kills Act 2 Cruel, and Act 6 eliminates Cruel altogether. This would allow them to keep the Cruel Acts just as they are with the least amount of changes, saving dev time. If you eliminate Cruel, you eliminate all of that leveling data, which would end up costing more dev time and not less.

Case in point: Warrior is pretty solid through the early campaign bust starts to run into issues in the mid-to-late campaign, then starts to get good again in the higher levels. Eliminating Cruel would have hidden that issue, meaning that as Acts 4-6 were released, the Warrior would have gotten worse over time. Since they have that data now, they can start addressing that issue now.

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

right except they said implementing these transitions is problematic for them. personally idgaf how they solve that gap, but acts should drop as soon as they are ready, so w//e they find easier on their end im gucci with

I wasn't arguing they shouldn't come out fast. I was arguing that giving players the ability to get free levels so they can skip straight to maps is silly.

eh, silly is running long as acts that pose no challenge what so ever as well. just how you look at it rly. then even with your argument that acts need testing, this tedious approach will prob turn down lots of players from making alts because Cruel is more of a PITA and takes long, so you might actually end up with less data over all

Either act 4 goes to cruel 2 or they add a dozen more Map tiers that are culled with each released act until our regular 1-16 after campaign. Seems simple enough an approach IMO, story is borked af anyway because of missing acts.