While that might be true, it’s beside the (original) point:
The point is: forced repetition.
In a game like this, where the story takes maybe 5 to 50 hours, and people play the game for well over 10 times that amount, the bulk of the play is in the ‘end game’. People can play the ‘endgame’ for 2000 hours, and still enjoy it, but the same people loathe having to repeat the steps they know by heart (like the ‘racers’ in POE), that ‘only’ take them 2 hours maybe.
Considering these ratio’s, I truly don’t know why developers keep forcing their players to play the story mode each time you play a new character, either an alt or in a new ‘league / season’.
The ROI in these games is never going to be in story mode again, like it used to be 15-20 years ago, it’s in the endgame. Accept it, and let the story go, please.
I keep seeing discussions about builds, and people optimizing the numbers of the stats, skills, gear - there is absolutely no Roleplay in that, but nobody complains about the fact that you cannot just play an ARPG anymore by just reading the flavour text, and hoping the skills you pickup because they fit your character will be all equally valid and balanced so you can reach the end game in the way you like and that is aligned with the role you want to play. Unfortunately, when you try that, and struggle to progress in the game, people tell you ‘your build is not optimized’, or ‘you’re not using that one mechanic that all builds must use’, or you don’t have a movement skill to dodge the one hit attacks’. I think that’s sad, that you can’t seem to play an arpg without a spreadsheet / build calculator and thinking about tier x / damage number z is or whatever. The ARPG lost the roleplay and it got replaced by ‘calculate’ and became ‘CAPG’ along the way it seems.
Trying to forcefeed the few hours of ‘story’ on the players each time around, which seems to be the closest thing to roleplay, is not going to compensate for that. There is no roleplay in repetition, when it’s the endgame randomness you are craving as a player.
To me, the storyline of these type of games is basically just an elongated, actually cool sometimes, tutorial. Once you know it, it shouldn’t have to be repeated. It isn’t like there are options in the storyline to make each playthrough different.
Isn’t mapping or rifting the same thing? How many hours have I spent in D3s low tier Rifts and Grifts watching stuff on my second monitor? Every time I play a PoE league I’m sad the story is over, oh boy what a crappy story part ^^, and I have to do nobrainer low tier maps.
I still like the idea of Sanctum Breach most. Play the story and after it you have 6 (iirc) endgame modes and you can simply play what suites your fancy untill you’ve enough of it. Maybe it’s only me but rushing through a game just to play the same thing over and over again and call it endgame just isn’t that fancy anymore. I like to chill through the story arc or leveling experience from time to time.
On top of this we talk about an unreleased game. I think it’ll be a bad idea to offer shortcuts like an adventure mode this early. If they implement something 6-12 months after the game is released I’m okayish with it but atm I’m almost sure it might hurt the game in the long run Instead of improving it.
Ok i do like d3 (even though i totally stopped playing it now) and i think there are 2 ways of doing this that d3 does quite well
have a D3 approach where you can powerlevel a new char in 5min (in d3 this is either solo with high level items augmented to reduce level requirement to L1 or in multiplayer through another toon)
have an armory system (i wrote about this in another post somewhere) where you can switch effortlessly between builds hence negating the need for multiple sentinels as @Llama8 put it ------- i think this is the preferred route where if you gate the armory behind reaching L100 with each mastery class then i think this avoids “trivialising” switching between builds
Definitely, me too. That is why I like D3’s approach wher you can choose this as a player - replay the story to level a char, or go rifting for example.
This is exactly what i mean. Why forcing the same playtrough over and over.
Games like this are meant to play for years. It is horrible that the base idea is to have to repeat a story 1000 of times like in every other RPG. it is just boring.
Some people say it is a nice introducing and yes i agree. But after doing it 5 times for example i really dont need an introducing…
Especially if this game is planning to make leagues like POE.
I love grinding, but this design of having to do a way to long story line over and over is just boring. People keep saying don’t be lazy which sounds strange to me.
I play games because its fun. The endgame things of games like this is fun for me.
Repeating questlines is not. It feels like MMO’s were you need to walk from point A to talk to a guy and then walk miles to talk to a guy at point B ( this story is better dont get me wrong).
I dont get why people had change so much. Why are devs and people so scared to change things around. Last epoch has a portal system. Put it in to use for quicker leveling.
Add a new act for alt leveling or a different short version. The foundation is there already.
I would just like to add a side note to my previous point. While I still think there should be an alternate way to level after you complete the storyline on a character, I also think that while the game is in Early Access, and changes continue to be made to the storyline and its levels, it should be played through. If only for the changes to be consistently tested. That is the point of EA, afterall.
Ok, so to compensate in D3, every time you change your skills, donate some gold to the ground. You can roleplay a harder game if you truly want to.
To say that adventure mode is “simply the campaign maps playable out of order”. . .how is this different than mapworks in the Torchlight series, maps in PoE, MoF in Last Epoch. . .the list goes on. It’s the same system! lol
At least with D3 or GD you have the CHOICE to skip the campaign and level an alt a different way. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, and I think that’s what the OP here is trying so say.
The option to not have to replay the campaign every single character, would be pretty nice.
Personally I love leveling new characters and don’t get people who complain about leveling and this is in every game it takes what 6 hours on average among the classes/specs to get to monolith 45~ lvl so I don’t get the point of it getting shorter it extends the life of the game for me personally I can’t think of an RPG game with an option for shorter leveling experience after you leveled up one character that’s why its called RPG(Role-Playing Game)
But I do have one thing to add to the leveling process and it’s the fact that the last act is much much harder and rippy than the other ones you after the frost zone u get thrown into a zone much harsher environment and for solo hc enjoying people such as me its a big no no to go there until I’m somewhat geared and 55-60 lvl I haven’t tried it in the new patch as I was busy the last couple of days so I don’t know if the difficulty has been brought down but in my experience compared to the other acts even the last 3 acts are much tougher/rippy yes the new resistance overhaul might change that but still the fact stands that compared to the 1-35~lvl experience last acts are with much higher difficulty.
Adventure mode is endgame available from the start. Whether one thinks Diablo 3 is a good RPG or not is irrelevant to the leveling option though.
Just have the first character in a season needing to level via campaign,m & subsequent char can be level via some form of adventure mode is my suggestion.
While i dont know anything about current D3, i would prefer a system that lets me level my character through pure grind, like an easier monolith version for low level characters for example.
I also think that skipping leveling is a really bad thing. That just takes away the feeling of accomplishment.
The reason i would like to have an optional way of leveling (only after finishing the campaign!) is because almost 2000 hours playtime in Path of Exile i cant stand playing through the “campaign” anymore. It got so bad that i can’t play this game at all anymore even if i like the current mechanics/league. I just lose interest when thinking about: “ah yes, now i need to go here, and then i need to do this, and then i go here…” memorizing the different layouts and running them feels like a chore now. Every time you accidentally run into a dead end is frustrating because your progress is gated behind these arbitrary linear questlines. But the character development and growth is still fun for me.
If i could just run randomized maps and explore them, running into chests etc. (which feels much more rewarding in LE) while slowly pushing my experience bar with every mob i encounter would be a delight when i might reach the point that i played the campaign too often. But having a linear path that is predetermined gets boring quickly.
In general i think that the story can set a nice atmosphere and world but it is rather finite in its gameplay, while creating and developing different characters through the given systems with so many variables is the real fun, which i like to concentrate on. And systems that force me to pay attention outside of that can frustrate me.
