I finally hit level 70 yesterday, but was cognizant of when the game flagged Fallen Temple (the Capstone dungeon that allows unlocking World Tier 4); that became a priority quest at level 68. To back up a short bit, being at least 5 level lowers than the monster levels, results in a pretty steep “penalty” in terms of the gear check breakpoints due to the amount of damage that your character must do, while also mitigating incoming damage. When you are under leveled too much, the mob levels will be in red. But once you are closer to their level, that number will be white. It does not take into account your stats though (it’s just purely a level based comparison).
But this is where many extremely casual players are struggling with certain boss fights (since they haven’t found decent enough gear and/or aren’t running an effective build that allows their damage to scale accordingly). Even in T1, you can’t really just play the basic/core skill setup with boss fights without it being drawn out (you need to enjoy kiting/dodging a lot). Additionally, RNG can play a huge factor in terms of blocking progression (if you are unlucky, bad RNG can often times be overcome by playing a lot since that results in more loot dropping and eventually getting the pieces you need; but that isn’t the game play of a casual potato). Again, I’ve become one of these casual potatoes, but put on my old ARPG grinding cap to get a better idea of what is involved with D4’s end game.
The Capstone dungeons are a bit more extreme when it comes to the elite/champion mobs and the final boss. However, unlike the open world and most other dungeons, the enemies in the Capstone dungeons do not scale past their base level (50 in Cathedral of Light and 70 in Fallen Temple). So you can sort of out level both dungeons. Yes, there is a point where you will no longer get actual upgrades on gear (WT1/2 items stop scaling at 50 while WT3 Sacred stops scaling at around 70). Your character power becomes incremental from stat increases from your level, plus Paragon board point allocations. I’m trying to pass the gear check breakpoints for Fallen Temple; I partially ran the first portion (at 70), and had a slightly easier time with the animus carrier. But I want to get a few more Paragon skill points and work on leveling my core glyphs (since not getting those to 15 is a huge loss of potential character power).
I’ve completed the renowns for Fractured Peaks, Scosglen, and Dry Steppes. I’m now working on completing the last section of the Kehjistan (85% completed) and Hawezar renowns (to pickup those last 8 Paragon points). A lot of the side quests are mind numbingly boring; a few of them do kill two birds with one stone though since they end up taking you to a dungeon that also counts towards renown. Completing all of the existing regional renowns is the sort of grind that a casual player could focus on once they unlock WT3 (since it does feed into the “completionist” aspect that some players are into when they are exploring).
Items wise (at around level 69-70), I got a few pieces of gear that allowed fine tuning my build, but only one of them actually gave me a slight bit more damage from being able to sustain that DPS for a bit longer (namely an increase in mana reduction). I also attached my third Paragon board to pickup the nodes that gave increased mana. But I’m still not at a point where I can get rid of my basic skill (Frost Bolt) For most of my play, I’ve been balancing offense, defense, and resource/cooldown. But I’m feeling squishy way too often since I haven’t yet focused on barrier generation; I’ve been prioritizing aspects that can keep my Ice Shards going for mob clearing in dungeons and Helltides. But even one fireball from a soul burner during Helltides can take off a quarter of my HP in one hit.
This is all just a basic preview (besides renown) of what I’ll be repeating once in WT4 though (with the Ancestral gear grind). If I’d been playing this very casually, I’d probably still be playing the campaign, be only 25% into each regions renowns, and still be playing in WT1/2 (and probably would not be highlighting the issue with stash space and some of the other QoL issues). There will be some upcoming changes (as highlighted by the following fireside chat) including gems going into the materials tab.
But a lot of the other QoL stuff (like stash space as one example), has no specific time line since it was vaguely lumped in with the “D3 saw such updates over its 10 year development cycle” (to which I counter, such QoL aspects should’ve been included as a baseline in D4 from the start because one of the core things about these types of games, is the loot hunt). But this update does cover enough ground to stop me from putting the game aside (as I was considering once I hit 70) since they are finally looking at buffs and providing the ability to teleport directly to a dungeon (making the time sink running/janky mount simulator an option for those who enjoy that). The ongoing issue however will be the lack of stash space (I currently have 4 mule characters just to store stuff for my sorc).
The game itself ISN’T alt friendly (not only due to the lack of stash space, but also due to how items are severely level restricted the higher up your main character gets). The lack of stash space is a hinderance to keeping a lot of lower level items that can be used by alts to twink them along the way; twinking out alts has been a staple of these sort of games; D4 doesn’t even have a “reduced level requirement” property. So I’m left to conclude that even at lower levels, the designers don’t want characters to be “breaking the game play” since we know that having item power that is right in-line with the level of a monster, will be able to one shot them (add in damage multipliers, and you can ignore mechanics). And we know that monster drops are always several levels/item power below what they are in order to provide that challenge.
Digressing, based on actually playing the end game loop at WT3 (and WT4 is just more of the same), I do have to adjust my original rating for D4 from a 7.5 to a 7 though. The complaints about the world level scaling are valid IF RNG isn’t being kind to you because if you aren’t getting decent drops, everything else is leveling up while your power isn’t. D3 post-Reaper of Souls, also used level scaling but with a key difference. There were a lot more difficulty settings (albeit too much Torment levels), plus level 70 was max (for both character, and items) and where the end game gear hunt began. In D4, level 50 is the end point of your base skill tree (and start of end game), while your Paragon levels add another 50 levels (with 200 total Paragon skill points + 20 from renown), and your end game gear can have level restrictions from 50-100 where the thing that matters more is their actual item power). While you can adjust the difficulty, it’s nowhere close to D3’s; you don’t have access to the end game systems at WT1/2 for example. And while you can continue level up in WT3 all the way too 100, you aren’t going to get the higher item level power in WT3 (since Sacred has an item power limit), and will feel weaker as your character level goes up. This is a design decision that keeps players pushing their characters into the next world tier (and we know from data mining, that there is a high probability that WT5 will be coming; as for the level cap increasing, I sort of expect that with expansion content).
I’ve always been ok with not min-maxing or being able to do aspirational content in ARPG’s (I know hardcore ARPG players enjoy eeking out as much character power as they can by finding the best/rarest pieces of gear, min-maxing, and doing optional challenges that might be part of the game). Not everyone has the same objectives when playing a game like this. The casual potato side that I am now on, definitely has no desire for that kind of hardcore grind. Just getting to 100 is going to be a grind enough (and I’m not sure if I will even bother). None of the repetitive parts of the D4 grind is something I find enjoyable (I felt the same with D3 pre/post-RoS). I didn’t even think D2’s repetitive runs were my idea of ultra-fun either versus finding that interesting item (and part of that due to the itemization). I’m just doing this grindy game play for now to get a better idea of how the end game design (as it currently exists) resonates with the casual potato side of me (and from what I see, doesn’t really align with myself anymore). Basically, level 70+ represents a “breakpoint” not just in terms of the power (from items and leveling), but also a literal breaking point for a lot of players who aren’t into sustained grinding.
