** Diablo 4 Thread **

personally I'd think the game would be way worse without level scaling. It's open world and following the main quest is going to send you all over the place, it'd have to be way more streamlined to work with non-levelled content without wading through irrelevant mobs

A bunch of other games do this now like the last 3 odd wow xpacs, ESO and some others. In ESO it allows you to tackle areas of the map with their own story arcs in any order while playing different characters giving a lot more freedom. Without this you'd end up with vanilla wow where when you hit high level 80% of the map area is irrelevant content
 
We know most of the end-game already:
  • Nightmare dungeons (120+ scalable dungeons)
  • Helltides (region-wide events)
  • Whispers of the Dead (world quests)
I'd imagine the gameplay loop will be mostly be the nightmare dungeons; you'll complete the campaign around level 45 to 50, then you'll start farming keys for nightmare dungeons and progressively working your way through the tier levels of keys, progressing to your character to level 100, and always chasing the gear upgrades. The paragon board unlocks at level 50 and you'll be completing that also.

This is the concern I have currently with the nightmare dungeons as if they don't introduce a lot more variability to them and we're only going to get the same 4-5 tiles we're seeing the beta, with no random events, and the same "locked door" scenario to complete the dungeon for each of them, it'll get boring very fast.
 
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DanF said:
personally I'd think the game would be way worse without level scaling. It's open world and following the main quest is going to send you all over the place, it'd have to be way more streamlined to work with non-levelled content without wading through irrelevant mobs

A bunch of other games do this now like the last 3 odd wow xpacs, ESO and some others. In ESO it allows you to tackle areas of the map with their own story arcs in any order while playing different characters giving a lot more freedom. Without this you'd end up with vanilla wow where when you hit high level 80% of the map area is irrelevant content
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The level scaling doesnt really bother me at all, its only zones that you have already outlevelled which are scaled, its not the case that all the zones are the same level as you, just the levels that you've already done. You can still run into a higher level zone and there are higher level mobs, the way its done is just that when you are level 20 if you go to a lvl 5 area the mobs are 20 instead of 5. I'm fine with that, running about hugely higher than the now lower than me mobs would bore me
 
I don't mind the level scaling personally, but I get why some don't. I like the idea that when I hit level 100 I can still grind and find a challenge in any area of the world (including the starting areas) - but, I hope they don't use that as a method of end-game. Such as, in some ARPGs, you'd only find the very last levels of the campaign are high-level, and the beginner zones are fixed at a lower level. I don't want them to use the excuse of "well the whole world scales, you can play anywhere so there's loads of content to do" as an excuse to not have better end-game systems in place because they classify the world itself as a scaling end-game.
 
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MadMossy said:
Having a little think about the D4 endgame, when exactly does endgame start? Is it after the campaign when your around level 45-50.
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From what I've read, the end game essentially starts from lvl 50 onwards, at which point all the other mechanics open up to the player eg. Unique items, paragon system. The campaign isn't repeated, instead the player runs dungeons with "affixes" which raises the difficulty or adds a specific challenge. Then there are capstone dungeons which is essentially a gear check. These are longer, more difficult dungeons with unique bosses that the player has to defeat to progress to a higher World Tier.
 
We already know about the dungeons, which are so far maybe 5-6 different tile sets copy pasted a dozen times and called "content". At least that seems to be the case with the 23 act 1 dungeons, then there are the cellars which are all identical.

Hopefully they do their deepdive soon which they said they would be doing after beta, they just didn't specify if it was the beta just gone or after next weekend.
 
Tombstone said:
The level scaling doesnt really bother me at all, its only zones that you have already outlevelled which are scaled, its not the case that all the zones are the same level as you, just the levels that you've already done. You can still run into a higher level zone and there are higher level mobs, the way its done is just that when you are level 20 if you go to a lvl 5 area the mobs are 20 instead of 5. I'm fine with that, running about hugely higher than the now lower than me mobs would bore me
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I understand and accept this argument in favour of level scaling, but for me - and I'm sure many other players - it destroys any sense of progression which is one of the core reasons for playing an ARPG ( along with finding better loot ). It is very jarring being out in the open world at lvl 25 struggling to kill a pack of wraiths, when suddenly a lvl 6 Sorceror runs up and zaps them all in one hit with chain lightning.

The open world is meant to be packed with 150 dungeons, and then there are other points of interest, like cellars, strongholds, side quests, mini events and world boss encounters. Even on foot it doesn't take very long to reach any of these ( and mounts will lessen that time ). Why can't these POIs be the only thing that is level scaled ? After all, they are instanced and don't affect anyone else outwith your group.

As things stand, the only time the player will feel any sense of progression is in the endgame when monsters can't level any higher, and the paragon system kicks in with incremental upgrades. Uniques will probably also help but aren't available untiil lvl 50+.
 
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MadMossy said:
We already know about the dungeons, which are so far maybe 5-6 different tile sets copy pasted a dozen times and called "content". At least that seems to be the case with the 23 act 1 dungeons, then there are the cellars which are all identical.

Hopefully they do their deepdive soon which they said they would be doing after beta, they just didn't specify if it was the beta just gone or after next weekend.
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Given that they've only released a subset of the content, I think it's fair to assume that there's also only a subset of the tile sets on show...?
 
MadMossy said:
then there are the cellars which are all identical.
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I forgot about those :eek: They were awful. I liked the ones in Diablo 3 as even though they weren't exactly massively different, they were still different enough to see some variation. In D4 however it's literally all the same with the exception of sometimes the cellar is mirrored horizontally.
 
A cap on how far areas scale I think would work well. ie. This is a level 20 zone with +-5 levels for scaling. That still allows a lot of exploration by characters while still keeping the feeling of power progression.

Sinbad2000 said:
Given that they've only released a subset of the content, I think it's fair to assume that there's also only a subset of the tile sets on show...?
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Yes as there are the other area's, so we'll get the Dry Steps as a desert etc. However, we've already seen one single layout for the cellars which even with this being a limited beta, is worrying.
 
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Cantankerous said:
A cap on how far areas scale I think would work well. ie. This is a level 20 zone with +-5 levels for scaling. That still allows a lot of exploration by characters while still keeping the feeling of power progression.
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Yes, that would be my preference. Having a max level to which an area scales, but instanced content eg. dungeons isn't restricted and always scales to the player's level.
 
The variations in terms of tile set aesthetics doesn't bother me that much since, as people are saying, we're just in one area in the beta so the general theme of the dungeons will be similar. What is a massive issue though is how much the dungeons tiles repeat as seen here, here, and here. It won't really matter what the aesthetic theme is in another area of the world as if that area also only has the same handful of tile sets for their aesthetic then we'll see the same repetition.

There's just not enough tiles to produce a varied set of dungeons. Like in the first one I linked the whole dungeon is basically the same 5 tiles. They aren't even rotated or mirrored to try to be different, it's just an identical copy/paste.
 
xaldub said:
I understand and accept this argument in favour of level scaling, but for me - and I'm sure many other players - it destroys any sense of progression which is one of the core reasons for playing an ARPG ( along with finding better loot ). It is very jarring being out in the open world at lvl 25 struggling to kill a pack of wraiths, when suddenly a lvl 6 Sorceror runs up and zaps them all in one hit with chain lightning.
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Well to be fair, that example is an issue with balance rather than level scaling, obviously a level 6 should never under an circumstances, no matter how well geared or specced be obliterating a group of lvl 25s.
 
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Cantankerous said:
A cap on how far areas scale I think would work well. ie. This is a level 20 zone with +-5 levels for scaling. That still allows a lot of exploration by characters while still keeping the feeling of power progression.
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I have always hated upwards level scaling, I berated many MMOs for having that feature in them, if I am level 10 and wander into a level 30 zone, I should get annihilated by level 30 mobs, not have them levelled down to around my level, getting slapped should be my punishment for going into a higher level area, but its downward level scaling that I am ok with, if the roles are reversed and I am level 30 and go into a level 10 zone, I'd be bored just one shotting 50 mobs all at once so I'm happy for them to be levelled up to me to keep it interesting, thats if there is any reason for me to go to the lower level area anyway of course, if theres no reason for me to do that then I wouldnt be bothering to go there anyway and its a moot point.

Actually thinking about it, I've got those round the wrong way, I guess bringing mobs down to your level should be "downward" scaling and bringing them up to your level should be "upward" scaling
 
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I don't mind scaling upwards (i.e., mobs that were level 1 are now level 20 if that is my character level) but I hate the other way around. I shouldn't be able to just walk from the starting area to the last area in the game and expect to not get pasted because everything around me scales down to my level.
 
That's how they've done it isn't it? I'm sure I came across some mobs that were a higher level than me, but never lower than me.

It's interesting how they scale in a party as well, I see them at my level, but my friend who was a level or two lower than me sees them at his.
 
HungryHippos said:
That's how they've done it isn't it? I'm sure I came across some mobs that were a higher level than me, but never lower than me.

It's interesting how they scale in a party as well, I see them at my level, but my friend who was a level or two lower than me sees them at his.
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Yeah, I believe it's always monsters scale up and not down, which I'm fine with :) I get why others aren't though, such as the "my character doesn't feel any more powerful if everything keeps scaling with me" argument. I did see the "a level 5 character killed a monster is 2 seconds while it took me 8 seconds at level 25" argument (or similar variants of that argument) quite a few times, but as Tombstone points out, I think this is just a balancing problem where the monsters health scaling is off.
 
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yeah we're just in the starting area, pretty sure later zones will have min levels where noobs can't venture

tbh I find it really funny playing along-side lower level players, them one tapping mobs with their 1 unlocked skill. It doesn't last long though
 
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