I’d never thought I’d say this, but I miss the ‘infinite’ paragon system of Diablo 3 compared to what we have now in D4. When D4 came out with a fixed leveling system, it was generally positive because most players hated the fact that if they wanted to compete on the leaderboards, it meant an infinite grind for XP and paragon leveling, and not much about skill or build creativity. A fixed level also meant that casual players could eventually catch up to the racers over time, and therefore competition was really meant to be about “skill and build”.
However, after Season 2, with the introduction of the uber grind - the Devs must have seen how many more players were participating in this rat race or rather hamster wheel of a grind and thought this must be a winning formula for player retention. So let’s introduce a new hamster wheel - the Malphus boss, where if you’re a Solo player, its just plain torture doing 4 dungeons and then a boss fight, and all that for a measly 3% chance of getting a unique stone.
The main problem is that all that time is spent - it was just for a tiny chance of getting the item. In contrast, with D3’s paragon system, though it was infinite, it also meant if I spent 5-10 min in a greater rift, I’d expect to get 1-2 paragon levels, so at least there was some satisfaction knowing that my character has made progress, albeit in a small way. But the idea is that TIME = PROGRESSION in D3.
In D4, TIME = 2-3% CHANCE for a BIG PAYOUT and NOTHING ELSE!!!
I just spent my whole weekend doing Duriel and Malphus runs, and I got nothing!!! Literally no character progression whatsoever from all that time spent farming those ‘chase’ items.
Do players like being the ‘Donkeys chasing the carrot tied dangling in front of them’?
Just take a look at the Genesis stone. If you get it, your character can get a 50% dmg boost from using the flash of Adrenaline stone. For those of us who don’t have it - well we’re stuck at 20%. The difference in power is 25%. So obviously this is a huge deal, and for anyone who was looking to make a go at the leaderboards, this almost feels mandatory.
But objectively, you can dump a thousand hours farming this, and still not get it, and what else did you get while farming Malphus - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
Is it just me?
In D3, I didn’t mind the endless grind, and it was somewhat cathartic to just farm GRs, also cos there was a steady progression at least from paragon points and leveling the Gems. In D4, I’m sure most players actually enjoy farming Nightmare dungeons to level up the glyphs - because that leads to an overall progression of our character.
But Chase items - this seems only to make us look like fools.