Its depends from player to player, i mean i want that because i love to test things and have to spend a lot of hours just to discover i really spend a lot of my time in a build that i ended disliking feels awful (happens a lot to me btw XD), for example, lets say i want to make my own hammerdin, but to get all the perks that i need and all the set parts/uniques/forged items for my specific build i need to spend like 50 hours of straight gameplay of content that i already did with my other 8 characters and except for the first time that i really read what the npcs and the story was about, all the next runs i just press skip and close tabs every time i could.
I think that when you already saw everything the story can show you and there is no more content to do with it, is not a good reason to force player to play that loop, again and again and again, thats why end game content needs to be engage and change so much in a lot of games, because you need something different to do when you are at the top.
The big problem of D3 is that the game even on hard the story is ridiculously easy even on hard and nightmare and torment just unlock after you finish the game and is not really worth for anything more than farming better gear, same thing you can do in GR anyways, also on my personal taste, diablo III is plain bad, a retcon mess with a lot of meaningless characters and a lore that now say that the main character is basically a Demigod so all your achivements feels really meaningless because you have the angelic and demonâs blood, of course you can do it easily.
If you want to force everyone to play your story with every character at least do an interesting story and D3 clearly donât have it, thats why RoS came to save the game from his own disaster, because add content that let you skip that awful story.
In D3âs case, Iâd prefer to just start at 70 because everything before that is actually irrelevant. For LE it depends on what the focus of the game is supposed to be. Current design says itâs all about endgame, so maybe that should be the way to go. HoweverâŚ
This would be my much preferred option, as alluded to with the Chrono Trigger reference. Itâs important to note that this route is much more difficult and a lot more work, but I think in the end it would be much better for the game since we already have D3 and Wolcen doing what we discussed above.
The kind of changes Iâd like to see to the campaign would look something like:
Scale all campaign areas to player level (perhaps with some difficulty modifiers)
Rewrite the story to be more open-ended. Move away from this linear A to B corridor simulator.
The choices you make in certain quests alter the outcomes and choices available for other quests related to the timeline.
Be able to choose sides with various factions and even the âbad guysâ to influence the ending you get.
Make some loot only target farmable in campaign areas.
Only quest choice specific areas would be locked behind campaign progression. The rest would be open and available, the narrative largely dictated by which faction(s) you want to influence. This would make Multiplayer much more friendly (though still carry a few minor limitations).
Eventually include very in-depth, long-term objectives for players to seek out (but not be mandatory).
Move away from WoW-style !/? âquestingâ in favor of something more organic. Have changes the world show the results of your actions, NPCs that join you and talk to you while you progress certain quests, important enemies that you encounter several times through the campaign that react differently based on your choices, etc.
Echoes should still be available fairly early on as side content should players prefer that, but I think a much more interesting campaign would see a lot less sentiment that it should be skipped entirely.
Basically, if LE was to be this kind of game, I wouldnât expect it to reach this state for a couple more years at leastâif they started todayâbut I do think it would carve out a truly unique niche in the market without having to sacrifice the thing it does best so far: build customization.
I think it also would open many avenues for incorporation of seasonal content, which right now is very narrow because echoes are basically the only thing players have to care about. Even in PoE, the community consensus when new stuff is addedâeven though itâs available during campaignâis something like, âSkip the mechanic until maps.â This is largely because of zone/enemy scaling and how rewards are tailored to it. If all the zones scaled to you, skipping it wouldnât really benefit you, but doing the extra content might.
Iâve played ARPGs since they first existed and almost every variety of them. This would be something new and different. This would be something fresh in a genre filled with ârush to endgame and grind the same content until your eyes bleed.â Iâd love to play this.
Iâm pretty new here, but far from new to this genre or gaming in general.
While I do agree to a certain extent on the linear aspect of zones, I donât 100%. I think that all the quest related requirements could be funnelled into the linear part of zones, but keep the zones the same size/layout for the âcompletionistâ type of player who feel the compulsion to completely clear out every zone. Maybe just add in some extra chests for those guys that arenât on the linear questy path.
As far as not towning, auto completion, etc etc. I think that this leans a little too much into starting the speed running meta. This is a philosophy (speed runnning/zoom zoom) that has imho pretty much destroyed a similar game. Going down that road then means that the devs start to compromise other aspects of the game to counter the speed/zoom zoom and then the snowball starts rolling.
From my time playing so far, (absolutely love it btw) I think that the devs are completely on the right track in what they are trying to achieve. I think that us (as players) need to leave behind the idea of metaâs etc and baggage that we might have from âotherâ similar games. Suggesting mechanical tweaks is one thing, but the philosophy side of the game, I think we should leave in the hands of the devs.
Iâm more suggesting that the game is currently caught between two opposing design philosophies and the devs should put some thought into which one LE should be.
I see what youâre saying, and I kind of think that theyâve set their sail on which direction theyâre currently moving towards, and thatâs why the gameplay is so enjoyable compared to the mess that the âotherâ game has become.
Also worth bearing in mind is that the progress is currently stored locally on your HD, rather than on servers. Perhaps once the data is stored server side they might be thinking about a system for skipping most of the campaign for making alts? Maybe doing that once per episode/league, who knows what their plans are for that.
I think though, as weâre still storing progress data locally, this isnât really one of those issues that is high on their list right now. I would imagine that getting to the point of enabling multiplayer and server storage is a much higher priority, and that in turn would unlock the ability to do many more things with the database/progress.
My own personal opinion⌠After many years of poe and seeing how that has turned out; Iâm just really enjoying a game where everything is visible and understandable gameplay wise. No enforced zoom zoom, dodgy balancing manifestos, invisible ground effect nonsense, rng on rng on rng on rng, or having to deal with the most annoying thing of all - trading. LE is a welcome breath of fresh air and so I am completely happy to see the devs take as much time as they want to go slowly and get things exactly as they want them, one step at a time.
