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

@CycloneJack#6077 Thanks for your feedback.

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CycloneJack#6077 wrote:

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.

I disagree with your points regarding how valuable the data gathered in the Cruel is. I don't believe that's how their balancing works (the mid-campaign/leveling one, arguably yes, but endgame, surely not... which is where the real complexity lies). There is value to that data, I just don't believe it's as relevant as you believe it is. These are tweaks they can easily address as they introduce new acts or right after (e.g. buff/nerf skills at a particular level - that you'll drop during the given act - to achieve the desired progression speed or reduce/increase XP gain of monsters in the given act).

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CycloneJack#6077 wrote:

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).

You are missing the point about free gear. The purpose isn't to guess what build you are playing and give you exactly what you need. It is meant to give you enough life and resistances to be able to do T1 maps, even if your had horrible rng during the campaign (throw in a couple of appropriate level uncut gems since most of your damage will come from them anyway and you're set to start chasing for the actual gear you want by clearing maps). It's not as complicated as you make it sound, except if you want to complicate it for no good reason.

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CycloneJack#6077 wrote:

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.

So you believe that after act 4, re-doing acts 2, 3 only on Cruel and totally skipping act 1 and 4 (or just act 1) "feels natural/right" and better than just gaining 10-20 level at the end of the last act and jumping right into T1 maps? Your arguments make little sense to me and I still believe you are once again overestimating the value of the data that Cruel provides... act 1 cruel data might easily be very, very different from what actual act 4 data will look like due to totally different monster densities and so many other design decisions that we don't yet have any clue about.

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CycloneJack#6077 wrote:

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.

You do have a point, but for how long would have it been hidden and how bad and difficult to fix issue is this really? It would have been hidden for maybe another 1-2 months until they release the next act and then address the issue a few days later if it's really that bad. But you're right, in this particular case, there would have been some value to that data.

I feel like most people would be fine with a temporary weird campaign progression if it means we get more acts/content. When they add additional acts that also means additional maps and monsters in endgame as well

One important aspect that seems to be forgotten: No one here is asking to change the past. :) Cruel happened and if they managed to collect valuable data from it, awesome! The question is: did it bring enough value to keep it until all acts are available or did it already serve its purpose and could be dropped in favour of a hopefully simpler solution that doesn't require thinking about which acts should be kept as a "Cruel version" after act 4 is introduced and why... and then which one remains after act 5 is introduced?

Moving forward, having Cruel just feels like an unnecessary hassle that will very likely not answer any more questions than it already has. Whatever solution they pick, will anyway divide public opinion and that shouldn't be the driving factor behind their decision. It was meant to be a temporary solution... let's not forget that.

EDIT: I do see that there was value in having Cruel implemented at release, it very likely did bring value in the form of progression data until mapping starts. Maybe it can indeed still bring some value if new ascendancies, gems and weapons types are introduced prior to having all acts available. If so, then indeed, auto-leveling and skipping that progression phase might not be desirable. Pros and cons.. auto-leveling would delay tweaking progression related issues until maps... on the other hand, it would potentially allow for more endgame testing by getting players into the endgame sooner. GGG will decide whichever is more important to them at this stage.

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Khathuluu#7116 wrote:

I just don't believe it's as relevant as you believe it is...
I still believe you are once again overestimating the value of the data that Cruel provides... act 1 cruel data might easily be very, very different from what actual act 4 data will look like due to totally different monster densities and so many other design decisions that we don't yet have any clue about.

While I don't think that the data they get is precisely what they need, I do believe it is better than no data. Seeing how abilities scale from levels 40-60 is still very useful not only for existing skills, but also for new skills.

Now, I'll admit that the enemy data is probably less useful since Cruel isn't really being balanced in terms of long-term balance (ie: I doubt we'll see many, if any at all, balance passes on Cruel enemies), and new enemies are likely to have new abilities and mechanics.

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Khathuluu#7116 wrote:

You are missing the point about free gear. The purpose isn't to guess what build you are playing and give you exactly what you need. It is meant to give you enough life and resistances to be able to do T1 maps, even if your had horrible rng during the campaign (throw in a couple of appropriate level uncut gems since most of your damage will come from them anyway and you're set to start chasing for the actual gear you want by clearing maps). It's not as complicated as you make it sound, except if you want to complicate it for not good reason.

I'm not trying to purposefully complicate it, but looking at some of my characters, I'd have a hard time getting started on maps with a set of generic gear. I'll admit, I'm definitely not the average player, and I create some wildly bizarre builds (some of which don't even make it to maps), so I'm probably not the best person to evaluate this part of your suggestion. :)

On the flip, getting your gear naturally through drops would help them better determine how drops are during the campaign levels. Granted, some of the major issues have already been tackled, such as getting more yellows from bosses, and bumping up some currency drops. And, yes, RNG is RNG, so each player is going to have different results, but as we can see currently (with Cruel) is that these results can be wildly different (too different, IMO, and should be addressed).

I can see your PoV with this one, and I'm mostly on the fence with this, but again, I'm likely not the best person to judge this particular topic.

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Khathuluu#7116 wrote:

So you believe that after act 4, re-doing acts 2, 3, 4 on Cruel and totally skipping act 1 "feels natural/right" and better than just gaining 10-20 level at the end of the last act and jumping right into T1 maps?

Just redoing Acts 2 and 3; there's no need for a Cruel Act 4. And when Act 5 is released, its Acts 1-5 and Act 3 Cruel.

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Khathuluu#7116 wrote:

You do have a point, but for how long would have it been hidden and how bad and difficult to fix issue is this really? It would have been hidden for maybe another 1-2 months until they release the next act and then address the issue a few days later if it's really that bad. But you're right, in this particular case, there would have been some value to that data.

Possibly, but getting this early, especially when combined with the Armor issues and the somewhat lackluster passive tree, allows them to see how bad the Warrior really is at the moment. Even in the podcast interview they had to reluctantly admit that it was in a much worse state due to a variety of factors. If something like this happens with even one other class, then having the full leveling process pays for itself (and looking at GGG's track record with Leagues, I'm pretty sure we'll see this on one or two more characters LOL).

While I fully understand that some people want to get to Maps ASAP (which, technically, can also mean As Slow As Possible ;p), I still think going through the full leveling process is worth it in the long term for development purposes. However! I do think they should start looking into ways of making the campaign more interesting for repeated playthroughs. One suggestion I had in another thread was to allow players to apply mods to areas the same way we apply them to maps (make this a mechanic that is unlocked account-wide after completing a quest once maps are unlocked, similar to the blacksmithing bench or the thing that combines items). This would basically turn the leveling zones into map-like zones.