One common theme by players starting the game for the first time is how easy it is.
That’s because that is an intended design. Pre-max level (which is 52 for the time being as the original Korean version was level 60), the game play serves as an ongoing tutorial. The design though comes across as mostly non-contrived except for specific learning quests that are part of the leveling process.
The rationale for doing this is if the difficulty were frustrating at the start, that would be a surefire way to get a player to logoff permanently. It’s the entire “first impressions” aspect which is why even the initial first few levels prior to level 15-ish happens rather quickly. If a player is having a fun experience from the start, that will encourage them to continue playing and progressing.
But as most games that have this character level design, the objective is to get to level cap and acquiring max level gear in order to play end game content. That is where the difficulty will begin to ramp up. Diablo III works the nearly the same way except that it uses dynamic difficulty where the monsters are always at the same level as your character. In Devilian, different areas and zones have mobs with specific levels (this being more reminscent of how mobs were in D3 prior to patch 2.0 and how it was in D1 and D2).
Myself, I finally got my cannoneer to level cap and have found the game to be immensely fun. It’s not a 100% pure ARPG by any means but it still has far more ARPG aspects to it compared to Diablo III (which is mostly arcade). As far as I’m concerned, that is a huge win in itself. I decided the game is worthy enough from an entertainment perspective to get an Obsidian Founder’s pack.
Even though I feel that it is a bit overpriced for digital only items (I did opine in one of my earlier Devilian related posts that the $99 Gold Founder’s pack and this $149 Obsidian one should have included some sort of physical item), I believe in showing support for something that I am thoroughly enjoying. And in their live stream yesterday, they stated they will be rolling out content updates aggressively (they mentioned they’ve had long discussions with Bluehole Ginno regarding additional classes as well as other new systems).
They also provided a lot of feedback to Bluehole Ginno regarding the requests by players for non-gender locked classes; they say no promises but I take that to mean they will be adding genders to the customization down the road).
They also mentioned the early difficulty and said there are some tweaks to that were implemented in the build they have. They hinted that there will be some interesting surprises including a mechanic where some monsters after being killed, will respawn as something stronger with “friends”.
Basically, I’m beginning to feel this game is being underrated at the moment since some folks are trying to look at it as either a pure MMORPG or a pure ARPG. It is neither and is really a hybrid meshing of the two. It’s probably closer to the vision David Brevik had for his MMO version of Diablo III when Blizzard North still existed; just without the overtly dark and foreboding atmosphere.
