Act 4 and Difficulties (Normal, Cruel and Merciless)

How many difficulties should the game have when act 4 is leased?

Probably less. Eventually, there will only be 1 difficulty.

I miss ruthless.

But yeah there will be less eventually, but since there is 10 planed acts i don't think the 4th will remove another difficulty already.

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DemonScarf a écrit :

I miss ruthless.

But yeah there will be less eventually, but since there is 10 planed acts i don't think the 4th will remove another difficulty already.

We currently have 3 acts across 3 difficulties, effectively making it 9 acts.

A 4th act across 2 difficulties would effectively be 8 acts, rather than 12, and makes a lot more sense.


With each consecutive act afterward, they would be adding 2 effective acts (2 difficulties), and it would make sense to remove the second difficulty around act 7 or 8, if they ever get there.

That's a loooooooong ways out though.

I would personally love to see one difficulty removed with the addition of Act IV.

Having to go through everything three times is usually just pissing me off more than anything else.

I really hope they address the "10 act" myth. They once said something like "It would be great if we had 10 acts" or "We hope to have one act a year until we have ten acts" or something similar and everyone turned that into "THE PLAN!!!1!!1!!".

I'd like to see act IV, mainly because it would involve looking at the difficulty balance of act III. But after that, they shouldn't focus on expansion. They should focus on making the game better, or focus on making a new game. More more more doesn't make a better game.

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Shagsbeard a écrit :

I really hope they address the "10 act" myth. They once said something like "It would be great if we had 10 acts" or "We hope to have one act a year until we have ten acts" or something similar and everyone turned that into "THE PLAN!!!1!!1!!".

Yeah I try to subtley thwart this mindset when people spew the whole "plan" business. But nothing can be suggested without it immediately becoming a promise, apparently.

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Oiranoiccid a écrit :

How many difficulties should the game have when act 4 is leased?

When Act 4 is released the 3 levels of difficulty should be kept. 3 plays through to get to endgame maps is good.

GGG will need to serious look to other ways to very the playing difficulty factor as each new content (zone) added is slowly increasing in difficulty. The difficulty balance is already off and with GGG's desire to always make new zones harder than previously created zones the balance is getting further and further off. So now when we play it's cruise, cruise, cruise, small difficulty speed bump at Vaal, cruise, cruise, cruise the zones, increased difficulty in Gardens, Hedges, Library, then a bigger spike in difficulty at Septre of God zone (mostly due to damn desync + 1 uber lightning trap throwing dude), and finally a major difficulty wall at Dominus (for solo player). Then it's back to the beach on Cruel difficulty and cruise, cruise, cruise again. Rinse and repeat for Merciless with more quantity of mobs that hit harder as to be expected.

So GGG will need to look to other ways to vary the playing level of difficulty as they get more acts under their belt as the current thinking that each new zone must be harder than the last zone they created is going to throw the 3 major levels of difficulty off even further with Act 4. Maybe GGG needs to take a page from Blizzard and adjust the amount of experience gained by having different degrees of difficulty such as normal, hard, expert, extreme, etc. and with harder difficulty settings increase the amount of experience gained if you choose to play at a higher challenge level of difficulty. That would also allow uber hardcore players to dial in more precisely their desired level of difficulty and also can give them a path to level 100 in a shorter amount of game time.

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JahIthBer89 a écrit :

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Shagsbeard a écrit :

I really hope they address the "10 act" myth. They once said something like "It would be great if we had 10 acts" or "We hope to have one act a year until we have ten acts" or something similar and everyone turned that into "THE PLAN!!!1!!1!!".

Yeah I try to subtly thwart this mindset when people spew the whole "plan" business. But nothing can be suggested without it immediately becoming a promise, apparently.

Plan? What plan? This is all new to GGG and they are mostly making it up as they go. Yes, the whole idea of "if our grand vision for PoE unfolds as planned and we get to an Act 10 in ten years..." blah, blah, blah is sheer fantasy. I'm not wanting to ever discourage wildly grand visions of fame and fortune for GGG and their dethroning of the current king of arpgs (oops, must stop short of opening that Pandora's box of debate), but GGG has some extremely vast oceans to cross to get PoE to a better functioning state before any other grandiose visions can be acted upon.

IMO 4 acts * 2 difficulties is more than sufficient.


Looks like there are not so many players interested in this topic, and in that case, probably we will end up to be forced to play 4 acts * 3 difficulties.


If GGG introduces 4 acts * 3 difficulties for the coming new HC 4 months league, probably that league will end up to have less players than Invasion league.
My friends in Invasion league just repeat those leveling process are dumb boring. I think Invasion league has been the most fun league to level along with those quests in PoE ever, even though, repeating those 3 acts * 3 difficulties to try second or third builds is already too much burden in time and effort for most players.


I think in Standard leagues, players just smash the enemies in each acts with GG items, or for 4 months leagues, just using portal out and in, or even dying many times to get to the end game to start grinding good gears. In that case, IMO no reason for 4 acts * 3 difficulties, or even 3 acts * 3 difficulties.