Inferno is going to be brutal - Bluepost

[Deleted]

Hey guys, I don't think anyone posted this bluepost on this forum, atleast I could't find it. So here we go:

This is may be a good a time as any to REVEAL TEH SEKRITS! that Inferno monster levels aren't linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno playtesting. Our original intent was to have a flat difficulty level where you could go wherever you want, farm for items, and it'd be no more or less difficult than any other area in Inferno. This caused a few inherent issues for us, though:

It just felt wrong. It didn't feel right to be progressing through the game and have it stay pretty much the same difficulty the whole time. It felt like a letdown to get to the final boss of the game and it be no more difficult than the first.
There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty. So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV). For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno. They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.
Longevity. We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome. We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.

Now, you may be saying “I thought you wanted us to be able to farm anywhere we wanted. Now we only have half as much area in the game to farm in? What gives?” Our goal is to make the loot mathematically better in the later acts without making the earlier gear completely obsolete. We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.

Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, Mephisto runs, Pindleskin runs, Pit runs, Baal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random. Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better. Internally we find sometimes after an intense session of brutally hard Inferno it can be really fun to cruise through Hell Act III or IV and it’s not too uncommon surprise when an upgrade drops. We expect this to carry through to Inferno difficulty where somebody who can theoretically farm Act IV will likely still enjoy romping through Act I simply because the drop potential is still there. It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves

Personally, I can't wait to see how brutal the last two acts of inferno really are, but this bluepost sounds very promising!

What's your opinion? /discuss

/edit: Source: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/3798...-no-flat-diff/

[jvbastel]

sweet

can't wait to see how it turns out. Loving the beta, and looking forward to D3 grinding

[Vespian]

What it probably means, is that playing with friends becomes something that's actually in the spirit of coop. Hard, but extremely fun. It also makes playing with support characters, purely meant to buff or debuff and only deal damage on the side, mandatory, which I'm personally going to love. I'm playing with 2 or 3 other friends and we generally have a blast, with tight knit talents and skills to maximize group potential, while still playing the classes and builds that we like. If Blizzard keeps it that way and doesn't succumb to the loud majority (and it will be there), we might have a winner.

HC might never have been this interesting before.

[Beazy]

Yeah, I read that last week and it blew me away. Im looking forward to Inferno and the many days/weeks it takes to build up my hero to actually survive it.

Were getting closer!!!!!

[Deleted]

Also it's awesome that inferno is actually getting harder the further you progress, instead of the same difficulty through whole inferno!

BTW: Little bit offtopic but I'm wondering if it was possible to bet the ancients on hell difficulty solo? I tried it many times but failed so hard as sorc.. (maybe am a noob)

[Caiada]

Am currently very wary of the change to non-linearity and don't honestly see the point when there are much better ways to make a game hard other than increasing some stats. Like the confirmation of difficulty, I suppose?

[Deleted]

Am currently very wary of the change to non-linearity and don't honestly see the point when there are much better ways to make a game hard other than increasing some stats. Like the confirmation of difficulty, I suppose?

I think it was all about increasing stats for difficulty in Diablo, but I may be wrong.

[rkma]

When I saw this post, my first thought was, what do they mean by "no longer linear"?

This is what linear looks like:



... and this is constant:



So do they really mean "no longer constant"?

[Tobedeleted123]

Harder = better
nothing beats the feeling after completing something extremely hard

can't wait

[Nosonia]

Also it's awesome that inferno is actually getting harder the further you progress, instead of the same difficulty through whole inferno!

BTW: Little bit offtopic but I'm wondering if it was possible to bet the ancients on hell difficulty solo? I tried it many times but failed so hard as sorc.. (maybe am a noob)

Yes it was possible to solo everything in the game... as a paladin.

With my pally, I would be able to level a new character from 1-90 in about 1 hour of Uber Diablo (pre-nerf) spawns...

The entire game was destroyable by anyone with a brain (solo)

[Deleted]

Also it's awesome that inferno is actually getting harder the further you progress, instead of the same difficulty through whole inferno!

BTW: Little bit offtopic but I'm wondering if it was possible to bet the ancients on hell difficulty solo? I tried it many times but failed so hard as sorc.. (maybe am a noob)

Yes it was quite possible to beat hell ancients solo. Having spent 90% of my time in D2 in single player I've done it a great many times. It could be a pain in the ass and the sorceress untwinked certainly had it pretty rough but depending on your build it could be done. Summon necros still had it the easiest in my experience followed by my bowzon whose Valkyrie was hard enough to tank nearly anything.

On Topic:

Blizzard have also stated that Inferno will be rough but solo-able as well. It scales with party members so I can at least have a dedicated solo character and still clear the game. A good balance if you ask me.

Off Topic:

Did anyone ever try and do hell on /players 8 in single player? That's how hell is supposed to be. For those who don't know the /playersX command was a command you could use in sigle player to make the game think you had more players in your game. The more players in your game the more loot you got but the health and damage of monsters was multiplied by 4 if memory serves.

[Djuntas]

I always found Diablo2 non-twinked (A character with no support or to good gear) hard in hell, no matter class.

Even with best gear you could die as 1 player, trough you would haft to screw up big.

In other words: COOL O_O Seems promising to me.

[rezoacken]

When I saw this post, my first thought was, what do they mean by "no longer linear"?

This is what linear looks like:



... and this is constant:



So do they really mean "no longer constant"?

Yes they mean no longer constant, it's now linear (or increasing at the very least, maybe exponential or stairs rather than linear). I agree its not the right word in the text. (Well before Sheldon comes over constant is a particular case of linear where the slope is null but still...).

[Kolossal]

When I saw this post, my first thought was, what do they mean by "no longer linear"?

Linear does not have a single definition. In a video game, it often refers to the story line. You follow a straight line and don't stray from it(story line), while in a sandbox you can go in any number of directions. They are using the term similarly here, only stating the difficulty was a straight line, and didn't change. It doesn't mean they used the wrong word.

[klaps_05]

i wont believe this shit until i see it

[Saturate]

Also it's awesome that inferno is actually getting harder the further you progress, instead of the same difficulty through whole inferno!

BTW: Little bit offtopic but I'm wondering if it was possible to bet the ancients on hell difficulty solo? I tried it many times but failed so hard as sorc.. (maybe am a noob)

I've actually seen a guy throwing hundreds of health potions to the ground arond the ancients and then teleporting back to town to buy more just to throw them on the ground again. After what seemed to be thousands of potions and at least an hour later, he engaged the ancients and managed to beat them for the first time. You can imagine how long he had to die to them to have the nerves to do all that. xD

[VXFadhel]

Just a quick question, what do you mean by hard? Iron Maiden wasnt hard, it was brutal and unfair against melee (phys) builts that it wasnt even slightly fun to begin with (Iron maiden that is).*They removed it from mobs later on btw* I remember that with some builds having it easier than others in hell *thank you imm to ^&^* Back in my farming days, going to baal and so. With my zealot paladin, I used to play, check if burning souls or whatever they are called is there *if yes then avoid unwanted deaths by reseting the mobs* and so. Crushing blows and sorc ability (name is escapin me atm) was fantastic (as game breaking?). Diablo II wasnt hard, it was brutal and unfair!* So what do you mean by hard?**

*I finished the game on Hell (on /players8) on multiple chars and managed to get to hell on 'hardcore' built on my pala (didnt beat it though) before I decided to stop da madness called Hardcore Oo <-- Solo Play
**Talking about Solo Play here so dont be confusin now

---------- Post added 2012-04-03 at 08:45 AM ----------

i wont believe this shit until i see it

This, I wont be judging it before I play it myself.

Edit: Bolded the important part beside the question.

[Irisel]

Yes they mean no longer constant, it's now linear (or increasing at the very least, maybe exponential or stairs rather than linear). I agree its not the right word in the text. (Well before Sheldon comes over constant is a particular case of linear where the slope is null but still...).

Bazinga!...

[Deleted]

I just can't wait to fire up a HC char and numbercrunch my way into inferno. Awesome.

[Vespian]

When I saw this post, my first thought was, what do they mean by "no longer linear"?

This is what linear looks like:



... and this is constant:



So do they really mean "no longer constant"?

Actually, no, since difficulty is a variable term. Due to the fact that all mob hp, damage output, etc was linear, but the player still gained levels from ActI to ActIV, the difficulty actually went down. Note that they specifically mention that it's the MOB LVL that was previously linear, not the difficulty. They decided to pump this up to a level where the difficulty kept rising in comparison to the characters power per level, by increasing the mob lvls. So instead of going down, it's actually going up now. Which is great.

Edit:
Also, Diablo II was not brutal and not unfair. I've got over 2 accounts of HC characters beyond lvl 94, expired now though, and all of them cleared Diablo II entirely, even solo. And as far as I know they never removed Iron Maiden (?)