At any given character level, there is essentially no difference between Normal and Torment VI difficulty when it comes to actual monster ability. Their AI’s and mechanics remain exactly the same. The main difference are a bunch of numbers in a database which defines their health pool and amount of damage they deal out. The main objective of being able to handle higher levels of difficulties is of course the notion of increased rewards and experience as well bragging rights (for those who are into that sort of thing).
But the notion of actual challenge amounts to a gear check. A characters items provides the base means to deal with those numbers while a combination of skills provides methods of increasing the damage and incoming damage mitigation capabilities of that gear.
This is a key salient point to understand since ALL of this constant rebalancing the devs performs when it comes to class skills, is essentially meaningless.
During a post-Reaper of Souls interview, a very good question was asked if Diablo III would see a re-balancing (basically numbers compression) of key stats (damage and toughness) similar to what the World of Warcraft team did. The response was “At the moment, no. We will see how things evolve and adjust as needed. We like big numbers.”
I bolded that “we like big numbers” for a reason. It’s another self-inflicted wound they are putting on the game and is yet another example of why the game is in the state that it is. Just how large (damage, toughness, healing) are the numbers going to have to get to deal with higher tiered Greater Rifts in a non-cheesy way? What about monster damage and health pools?
This kind of difficulty design (based mainly on monster damage and health pools) means that the inevitable power creep (and that can come from items as well as rebalanced class skills that are buffed), trivializes the entire difficulty system to begin with. As noted in my previous post, legendary gems and newer legendary items will be the main ways to allow character power to increase in order to progress through Greater Rifts. But that power creep will quickly obsolete the base difficulty system (Normal – Torment VI).
And this will be a never ending cycle so long as game difficulty is handled this way. I do understand some of the game designers did not like Diablo II’s monster design when it came to difficulties (where monsters gained more elemental abilities as well as elemental resistances). Instead of iterating on that aspect and improving it (again, by introducing monster intelligence in their AI such as even more granular reaction to use of character active/passive skills, increased crowd control and elemental resistances but never to the point of full immunity, increased ability to work with other monsters, etc).
Thus game setting difficulty becomes more about tactical play and actually involving more player skill in terms of understanding game mechanics (both class and monster mechanics) as opposed to the current gear check (the new legendary gems continue down this same path). But as I also previously mentioned, the power creep involved in this, will eventually result in players not having any other end game outlet again except to only play Greater Rifts because the games base difficulty won’t offer any sort of challenge. Re-scaling that base difficulty doesn’t change anything. Adding in additional Torment difficulties doesn’t change anything (if you did Torment I, the content is exactly the same at Torment VI; and it will be the exact same at Torment X with just bigger numbers).
So yeah, this “we like big numbers” is a really elementary way of dealing with a fundamental design flaw with the games difficulty system. It’s why even with the PTR, I can’t even play the game for more than an hour before I need to stop. The game play is mindnumbingly the same. Greater Rifts just moves all the loot to the end and forces me into this “beat the clock” sort of game play. This end game design in Diablo III lacks that inherent fun factor that is present the first time one actually plays the game. It’s like when Reaper of Souls launched; playing the Act V campaign and leveling again to 70 brought back that feeling (at least to me). And it’s not only because it was fresh/new content.
Seasons hasn’t even been implemented yet but I already see no difference once you’ve leveled, unlocked Torment plus Adventure Mode, and begin farming again. For someone like myself who enjoys the game play experience that is offered while leveling, that part of the game will feel the most fun. But after that, I know it’s going to get old very fast. The competitive (leaderboard) aspect will be a farce because there will be enough RNG involved where luck will determine placement more than anything else. Seasons on the PTR will also reveal all the self-inflicted design flaws present within the general campaign that cannot be patched without affecting the rest of the game (they’ve already done enough damage nerfing experience and rewards in trying to stamp out degenerative forms of game play including game flipping of certain quests).
