A way to skip the Story/Roster features (small rant)

Feedback and Suggestions
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I was thinking that having some kind of way to skip the story (or making the leveling a bit faster) could be a good addition in this game. Now hear me out. I know the story isnt hart to beat or anything but, depending on what class or what build you wanna play, it takes up more time. After making 5 chars and getting them through the story, I would legit pay you guys to buy a story skip. Like no joke, I would pay 10 dollars, euros, yen, zenni dont care what to just not do the story anymore.

Would be enough if i could just do the main story and leave the side quests (or get boostet from a high lvl friend). But thats not possible here since you need to unlock your idol places and (some) passiv points ALL OVER AGAIN. In which case you HAVE to do the sidequests again. On every alt char you do.

Why is that a thing? There is no good explanation i could thing of why that is in the game. There is a feature in the game that lets you catch up the lvl of your skills if you swap them out. Why is there not a feature to catch up if you make your 20th alt? Or something like “hey you have already done the story on 3 different characters, would you like to skip the story for this one (doing so skips the story for you and gives you a lvl 50 character. this does not give you any gold or equipment)”.

And thats just 1 idea I had of like 20 different ways to implement anything that would shorten or completely skip the story. Whats importent to say is that having to do the story AT LEAST once to do so would be required.

You could do so much with it, for example:
Making a Journey mode where everythig is already unlocked and the areas scale with your level so that you can level where you want.(Probably harder to program)

Make it so you have to pay and thats the only way to get a story skip.(Some people will hate you for it but you would 100% get a lot of money from that)

Make it so you can skip a chatacter with in game gold, like I dunno 1m gold or something.(Could be like stash tabs so you you have to pay more every time)

And again that were just 3 ideas i had thinking about it for 2 minutes for skiping the story, not even including making it faster to go through it.(Again like making idol slots and passiv points from sidequests a Roster wide thing)

So, I hope someone who has any kind of influence over these decisions reads this and thinks the same. I know you guys are really busy with the release and no, Im not asking that a shorten story/story skip will be there at launch… BUT. I would be glad if you guys are aware of this and the problem some players (including me) have with it. That problem would be that I would be really excited to play a new class. But just thinking about redoing the story makes me not even starting the game.

I think that was all i had in mind right now. Thats for reading and have a great day I guess.

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Dungeons let you skip parts of the campaign. However, they’re not yet balanced for low level characters. They’re working on it. And I’m assuming that, since they’re working on that, they’re also working on other systems for the passives/idols.

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Paying to skip campaign would make this game pay to win. Devs have already said they arent going down this road. The second EHG does anything with p2w big or small. I will be done with thier game.

There are dungeons in the game that let u skip parts of the campaign.

Even if there was away to skip campaign like in d3 or d4 u should absolutely start at lvl 1 not lvl 50.

As well as once ur in end of time chaoter 2 u can start doing the monolith. Of course ur build needs to be strong enough at that point.

As for getting boost cuz other characters have already done a said thing. Imo no thats not a good design for any diablo likes. There should be no benefits given for having done saod things on a main character. Alts shouldnt be getting any boost. Thats a big problem i have with d4 among many other issues.

Tbh theres no difference from leveling from lvl 1 in the story or end game content. In the end ur going to repeat the same thing over and over.

Imho d3 and d4 have ruined the diablo like genra. Not every game in this genra NEEDS to do things the way D3 and D4 do things. Such as story skip.

If side quest and other things carry over to ur alts what content other than monos do u have left to do. This is why i tend to main only one character in poe challenge leauges. Ur atlas is account wide for that league. For me it gives me nothing to actually complete on my alts. I jist get bord and quit the league.

Somethings mainly the pay to skip or skipping story and being lvl 50. Isnt the best idea for a game like this. That is a live service game. The faster players finish a cycle aka season. The less likely they are to buy from the MTX shop.

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You can already skip the story. The moment you reach End of Time (around level 20), you can switch to Monos and ignore the story. You will level a lot faster too.

If you want to earn all passive and idol slots, you play the story up to the Tundra area and will have everything, and can switch then.

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Yup, while he didn’t mention it, he did mention being boosted by a friend but that isn’t entirely relevant for the campaign skip purpose because you have to go back & get all the passives & idol slots. Dungeons are the same in this regard, ignoring any balance issues.

How exactly? What would one be “winning” by not having to do the campaign for the 90-somethingth time (I have 85 offline characters plus a few online characters & some CT characters over somewhere around 2.6-2.7k hours)?

I enjoy the gameplay & levelling so I don’t want to skip that, but the campaign, urgh. It’s nice when they rework the chapters for 1 or 2 times passing through them, but after that it’s just something I’d like to avoid while keeping the fun bits (the actual gameplay).

So again, what would I actually be “winning” in this putative “p2w”? I would imagine that depends on how it’s structured:

Option 1, you skip to the end of the campaign with all quests complete, all quest rewards (ie, passives & idol slots) & waypoints, but you’re lvl 1 so monos are likely a bit more challenging & will drop higher level gear, so you still need to go back to level-appropriate areas & kill mobs to level & get gear. Not sure how much you’re “winning” here, though you would be able to do arenas & get on the leaderboard (at lvl 1) though you have minimal gear so you’re probably not going to place too highly? Maybe? No idea.

Option 2, as above but you’re level-appropriate for the end of the campaign, if it’s an alt you could use some stored gear & you’re good to go tearing up the monos/arena, buuuuuut, this is an alt, so people are still ahead of you & then presumably it’s more about skill on the leaderboard? Again, no idea.

If the idea of getting to monos before other people is “cheating” in your mind, then what about those who are really good at speedrunning the campaign? What if skipping the campaign were only available for alts (like GD’s higher difficulty unlock consumables)? What if it were only available for gold as one of the OP’s suggestions?

TLDR, I don’t enjoy the campaign anymore, it makes me want to not play the game. This makes me sad. And yes, I’m fine with playing other games, life is too short to play something you’re not happy playing. If I wanted to do that, I could just work longer hours, then at least my manager would be happy.

And they are, IMO, not fit for purpose in that regard (as I’ve always said).

D3/4 weren’t the only games to have campaign skips, GD did it as well. Besides, if you enjoy the campaign, is anyone stopping you from doing it?

I’ve italicised the relevant section for you if you missed it after reading the title/first paragraph. The OP is aware of what you mentioned.

I get why the devs don’t want to enable people to skip the campaign, they’ve spent years making it, it probably makes them a bit sad to hear that people want to not run through it.

Yeah, this comes up frequently enough that the devs are very well aware of it.

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I remember there was a similiar thread some time ago, so i will be brief:
There are people, who like the campaign and there are those, who don’t like the campaign, but all of them are forced to play it for mastery, passive points and idol unlock. Tie all points and idol slots to level and be done with it. In Grim Dawn you can play arena since level 1 without touching campaign, although GD isn’t perfect as you still have to play campaign for reputation for faction gear, mostly augments. But you can go to arena at level 1 and stay there until 100.
Let us play campaign on the first avatar and then let us choose our paths for alts. Even great stories get boring when you are forced to go through them 10 or 100 times.
It took LOTRO almost 15 years to realize this and decouple trait points from endless quest chains and achievements and just award points per level. Be smarter, try to learn it in less than 15 years.

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Actually, Mike has already said before he’s aware that not all people want to play the campaign multiple times and they want to give alternatives. It was the same stream where he said dungeons allowed you to skip parts of the campaign and that they would be rebalanced for 1.0.
So it’s quite likely we’ll get some sort of campaign skip in the future, if not on 1.0. Along with alternative ways to get those rewards.

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My issue with the campaign is that the mastery at the end of time and access to mono is not aligned.
I think that they should shift the acts after the mastery to the first mono’s you go through, unlocking the idols, passive, and stat points via the quest echos like any other “quest completion”. The shifting of time starts with a completed epoch which occurs when you enter EoT.

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Wouldn’t that mean scrapping the campaign entirely after lvl 15-20 odd? Or at the very least only giving you the first few idol slots till you’re in your 50s (ish) & doing monos?

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Not really, with the way acts 1 & 2 are done, it does make more sense now to use the EoT as a way to “discover” what happened through the acts as Mono islands. At the end of an act you fight a boss, use that boss fight as the unlock mechanism.

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As an alternative to getting the passives/idol slots via the campaign?

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Yes. its the areas between the beginning and end of an act that are lackluster.

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My opinion is that the campaign should be mandatory for your first character. After all, the devs put a lot of work into it, so you should play in full it at least once. After that, I like it when there are alternate ways to level. Like in D3 where you could start in adventure mode. Or D4 where you can do dungeons, or helltide, etc. Or like GD that let’s you start in arena.

Anything but the PoE model where you have to do the campaign over and over and over and over. It’s so annoying that there is even a market for carrying new chars through it.

I would include D2 in this, but D2 only really has the campaign anyway, so if you could skip that you’d end up not playing the game at all :rofl:

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At least you only have to do it once per character now not 3 times.

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Well, even GD already changed that (with the latest patch). As I said, the only reason D2 won’t change that is because the campaign is 95% of the “endgame” content anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree with this. My suggestion is for character #2 on… The first time I think you should have to go through it as far as you want. Still so many cut off at around level 29 it makes fall of outcasts a joke.

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I was refering to being lvl 50 when paying to skip the campaign… should have added that in my reply.

As for speed runners and players going faster. Doesnt bother me. They are earning thier lvls rather than buying thier way to lvl 50 as well as skipping campaign…

Paying with in game gold to do a campaign skip would be fine even could be lvl 50. Even paying to skip campaign with real money would be fine. Thats IF all u can pay for is campaign skip and no lvl jump.

paying to skip and be lvl 50. That would making it p2w. U payed real money to gain those 50 lvls. U didnt earn lvl 50 from playing the game.

Imo i think campaign skips should be something earned. Not just handed to an alt. Such as the dungeons, paying to skip with in game gold. Or even some sort of token that drops to skip.

These token could even be the only item that u get to keep from cycle to cycle. And can be used on any character. Could also make these tokens only tranfer to a new cycle once. So say u get one in cycle 1. It will go with u to cycle 2. If not used in cycle 1 or 2 u loose it in cycle 3

Could even make it where each cycle ur first character has to run the campaign. but any alts can skip campaign.

Only issue i can see with skipping with gold. Is gold RMT bots

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its about illusion as crazy as that sounds.

people deep down know the world isnt fair, thats not breaking news.

But we enjoy the illusion of fair treatment. if you are really good at running, you will win the race, and not everyone will ever be able to achieve that winning speed. But everyone has to start at the starting line. We know that is how it works, and how it should work.

there is also alot of differences in how we judge unfairness in how its applied. “He has a wheel chair, so he gets this more flat road to race on, and starts with a headstart” many people would be okay with this, we are okay with giving concessions to people with disabilities that we have sympathy for. “He gets to start 50% of the way done because he was willing to pay for a skip” is never gonna fly anywhere ever. Because most people just dont ever support paying to get ahead.

Even if the person not paying never had a chance to be number 1, they dont really care. as it breaks the illusion that we are all equal players.

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The game right now has almost 0 content and as soon as people relise how boring Monolith can become they’ll drop the game and badmouth it. So what do devs do? They stretch the content as much as possibel. Be happy you need to play the story only once and not 3 times on different difficulties.

Give it some time and we’ll see different methods to level a toon. Right now it’s simply a “unlock everything again because once wasn’t enough!” kind of game. Many people see this as a feature so you’ll most likely find a lot of not so many intrested people when it comes to this topic.

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