And this is the crux of my issue. Once you get that baseline for say farming T4 Julra, you’ve pretty much reached your max cap for farming potential. Outside of learning the encounter better, you aren’t improving your clear times/success with gear. In LE, it feels too much like the gatekeeper gear-check for most end-game encounters is also the max upper-limit you will reach in terms of power.
Now, once again, I understand T28 gear, an LP4 Argentus, etc etc (not even counting max/near max stat rolls on gear) is not required. But, as I stated, it just feels off to be theorically power-capped in “good enough” gear. Once I clear T4 dungeons and/or high corruption Monos, I should be gearing so I can clear them more effeciently. Otherwise, what’s the point in continuing that character? “Ok, killed T4 Julra, this char is done”? No, I want to keep playing that char, and I want to keep improving it… sure, there will be a hardcap on power level, but the softcap shouldn’t be so close to the gatekeeper level.
For example. I have a character who farms T4 Julra. Julra gloves are BiS for that character. Once I obtained them (no LP, fairly medium rolls), I didn’t feel a shred of power increase. So now what? I keep farming her for that abysmally miniscule chance of a well-rolled 3+ LP glove? Then what’s next? Pray to god I find an exalted with my preferred stats to meld onto it, and then also pray the correct 3 get picked in the LP combination lottery, or I effectively brick the ultra-rare LP3+ gloves I spent maybe 6+ months farming? That just feels shitty to even want to attempt. It’s why I don’t bother playing that character anymore. And, since I have killed Julra already, I see no need to keep going back through dungeon hell for no power increase on other characters either. Outside of killing Julra, just to kill her, there’s no point. Since there’s not much actual character improvement, if any, to be made once I’m able to kill her in the first place.
All that does is kill my fun playing this game, by simply reaching the end game. There’s no realistic carrot for me to farm, so why would I farm the end game for anything? The game can already be beaten with 0 LP uniques, and T20 gear. And getting above that is a frustrating maze of never-ending RNG lottery, that the player has almost no control over.
Now, to the point about D2 offline, I can’t honestly answer, because I haven’t played D2 since it was relevant 10+ years ago. But I know, I never felt like the game was actually against me reaching uber power levels. When I quit, it was simply because I had found a new game to play (probably one of the MMORPGs I spent years in). So if you want to hear where my line is, it’s simply, ‘give me actual hope I can get these items, and have a reason to keep playing the characters I may have some vested attachment to’.
