My issue with games that have infinite difficulty progression is that you “never” beat the game. The game sooner or later “beats” you. While you can experience progression by being able to handle the same content with greater and greater numbers, you inevitably hit the wall a few rifts, or corruption levels later.
Another aspect is that with finite difficulty, any build that can beat the game is considered viable, allowing for build and playstyle variety. With infinite scaling, there is one build that does the job best, and everything else, after a while, begins to feel as waste of time. Sometimes players will give up during the character selection screen after having the though train of “actually, I must play build A, using skills B and C, and I need to grind corruption level 200 to get items D and E so can I grind faster.”
I bet after a while, instead of “Defeat Uber Boss XXX”, the criteria will be “Defeat Uber Boss XXX under 3 minutes” and any build that takes 3+ minutes will be considered non viable. And eventually, one only build will shine. Exactly the same as with infinite scaling.
Self imposed challenges are just as arbitrary as any other form of challenge when you’re talking about something that is not real.
Even in non-“infinite” games, people pursue challenges and milestones that are clearly defined but aren’t “beating” the game any more than hitting Wave X of Infinity Murder Area. Sometimes they’re integrated directly by the game, sometimes they’re not. But there’s not much practical difference between the two.
Infinite scaling is awful and should never be in an aRPG unless its a special mode/zone
Diablo 3 pushing high ranks was awful and in PoE in deep delve nobody has any defence as theres no point, your game devolves into a shitshow of one shots/movement skills but we arent playing a Souls game where you can manually dodge everything
in Diablo you open a rift see bad layout/mob type and instantly leave and remake the game. I was already doing this in LE at corruption 300+ - you see a zone filled with bad mob types you just suicide and restart and hope for Spiders. its shit game design
I enjoy infinite scaling but it has to be done well.
Chronicon does it well, not only do the mobs scale infinitely, but so does the player. This means you can simply chug along with any build and eventually you will go to higher content just on virture of having higher stats. You still will hit walls, and the infinite stats have diminishing returns for players, but it offers a sense of progression for infinite scaling.
Im not that much of a fan of the “infinite corruption” that LE has, but I also dont believe its truely infinite. it caps out at much lower levels and only the most extreme players are going to go past 300, and the gains for boss loop farming I read cap out at 600? Because of the way it scales monster modifiers its basically impossible to go “forever”
its just a stretch goal for some builds, Im perfectly happy grinding away at 200 which almost any build should be able to do, and even if it cant, 100/150 is perfectly fine too!
Last time I played it capped at Mythic 15, which is still capped, that was a while ago but the game has an illusion of infinite scaling but it wasnt there
Player isnt ‘capped’ but once you max every 20/20 you put points into +5 attack which is basically Diablo 3 ‘main stat’ Paragon garbage
I had a level 12xx Paladin who could clear all Mythic levels. I even have an old video on youtube clearing M15
At the end of the day ‘infinite scaling’ means the content always will outscale the player even if there is a limit still attached it doesnt matter as the player probably cant get there. Chroninicon would still have it and this game has it…
If a game wants a never ending difficulty component I have no problem with it… so long as the scaling is not forced on a player prematurely. Zero problem with this at all… In fact, I would have zero problem with a newgame+ type mode where you could infinitely restart the game at higher difficulties each time… not an issue for me because its optional.
Right now, if anyone wanted to complete all the content (including all empowered corruption 100 Monos) they can and I personally would consider those viable and “game complete” builds… especially for casual players wanting a “goal” to aim for…
Some people may even consider just completing the campaign as suffcient - thats entirely their prerogative imho…
Others may think that they can ding lvl 100 character xp then they are complete…
Still others may think that they will only have a complete char based on their personal goal of 500, 1000 , 5000, 10000 corruption… entirely up to them.
Even more players may have an arbitrary time limit on a game - i.e. they will play the game for 1000h to consider that they have gotten their monies worth…
All are entirely valid and who cares if the game has a component that means you can infinitely play it at infinitely increasing levels of difficulty…
Sure, some will want to use it as the proverbial “dick measuring contest” but again, who cares…
Personally, I consider the game done when I get a char through all the empowered monos on default corruption… and for my own min/maxing purposes, I consider a build done/viable when I can easily farm 300+ corruption… Those are entirely personal and have no bearing on anyone else and have no real basis on anything other than my own ideas of what I consider “job done”… although my OCD does like to ding character level 100 too…
To you possibly, for me the mindset is ‘ok done at 300 corruption now I have to do 301 because theres a stronger boss there’ this is the fundamental issue is you cannot NEVER ‘complete’ anything as the devs remind you ‘hah that wasnt the strongest version of that boss and never will be’ That massive end game upgrade you got to beat Corruption 300? yeah that is meaningless now as the boss now has 10% more HP/Hits 10% harder or whatever
All the great games have an end point. Diablo 3 was not a great game. Even the Souls series have New game+ all the way to NG+9, guess what happens from NG+9 to NG+ 99…the scaling stops the enemies never get stronger, its the peak difficulty of the game and your power level
Thats where Arena exists, no issues with infinite scaling in a secondary mode. infact thats ideal situation. People can popoff in enclosed environments. Devs can also use that as balancing feedback tool
However in the main game it sucks, the main game is Monoliths currently, Dungeon does NOT have infinite scaling, Julra has a ceiling and you build around that, thats a good thing.
You definitely have an interesting perspective on this…
I suppose if you compare a computer game to a more traditional game like chess then there is a defined end where you no longer progress past a certain point and to play again you start from the beginning and reset the chess board… There is a definite END to a game beyond which no-one can go… I suppose there is some comfort in this.
I have played lots of games like that… linear quest games all effectively come to an end, Donkey Kong comes to an end when you rescue the Princess… Puzzle games like The Room end… and then you just start again from zero and do everything again. Nothing wrong with this at all…
Then there are plenty of games that let you continue beyond the “end-point” achievement… Civ games and other builder/strategy types tend to let you continue with the world you have built once you have either won or lost based on whatever criteria was decided at the start… Factorio lets you continue to build and fund parts to send your rockets into space indefinitely (well at least until the generated map runs out of resources after potentially thousands of hours of real time play)… Skyrim can be played indefinitely after achieving the main quest line and it doesnt really end in the true sense of the word… Witcher 3 to some extent is the same (although once the quests are done things can become boring wandering around picking fights with peasants and drinking…)… Terraria doesnt end when you kill the Moon Lord or purify the entire map…
I understand your need for a target/goal/end point… but why does it have to be so chiselled in stone? Why cant you make your own? Sure there will be “targets” in game like farming for Omnis which mean you need to achieve certain things but why does a game like LE have a 100% end?
If I were a casual player and just wanted to experience all the content, then why worry about an infininitely scaled endgame? Maybe in that instance, I wouldnt even consider Empowered Monos as part of the game but a secondary optional feature like Arena? It is afterall the same content, just harder…
I mean, there are lots of games that also get more content over time… so at any given moment, you may actually NEVER be complete with a game because while you are playing the devs are working on future content (potentially) and DLCs… Take Borderlands2 & 3… great games but grief… I would finish one campaign and max out a particular Zane setup only to find another DLC and even more progression available… How many times have to played an online game… achieved everything that there was to achieve only to login 6 months later and realise that there is a crap ton of things you still need to do…
Anyway… As I said, I find it interesting that you do not like that the game doesnt have an end in the traditional sense and that for you it just has a repeated loop of the same content with increasing difficulty instead.
I dont see a problem at all really… as long as its optional and I can decide at any time when I feel that the game has “ended” when I have done XYZ…
i Definitely align myself with @vapourfire over @Shrukn . I see LE as an infinite game that I plan on playing infinitely. There are many finite games that I love: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Batman: Arkam series. But their finite nature means I only enjoy them once or twice. LE with its constant development cycle has a good case for being an infinite game.
I wonder: what is difference between capping corruption at 10 000 vs leaving it infinite?
