Originally posted by Darknessguy64 I thought all "Dynamic Difficulty" meant was that if you enter the game as level 30, the mobs you face are also level 30, regardless of what Act you choose to play. Their level will increase as your level increases. That's all it is. No more level 52 slogging through level 25 mobs who drop level 25 gear.
Yes, and the difficulty level is on top of this. Normal is going to be easy mode at any level, and t6 is going to be hard unless you have super gear.
and it is moot at L70 when there is no more "dynamic" adjustment of levels.
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 Maybe I was doing it wrong but...When leveling my Hardcore Barb, the game won't allow me to adjust the difficulty. I haven't tried while on the main menu screen tho. Just while in game. And I don't have a lvl 60 Hardcore character.
You can lower the difficulty but can't increase it from the game menu during a game. You can increase/decrease it before resuming or starting a new session under the 'game settings' option right below 'resume game'. You'll have access to all the difficulty settings except torment (normal, hard, expert, and master) and then you'll have torment after your first level 60.
The more I play it, the more I think this is the best thing they changed out of everything. I'm playing my low level caracters again because it's so much more fun to have a challenge right from the beginning instead of having to go through 3-4 playthroughs to start having fun. I think any setting between Master to Torment 3 is perfect for people who know how to play. Master is great prior to finding a decent skill build. I'm enjoying Torment 2 a lot on my monk. I have a pretty fun build while it's easy enough that I don't need to stack defensive stats and gear any more. I could probably do Torment 3 or 4 focusing on defensive stats/gear/skills/gear but I don't think it would be as fun. That's the beauty of it. It can accomodate any playstyle and desired level of challenge now.
This was the problem me and my group ran into. We started at hard and immediately went to expert. After about 3 hours of that we were all about 31 and wondering why the game felt pretty easy but wasn't sure what setting to try next time we play. I had this same discussion in another thread and was going to jump straight to torment but we may just try master and see how that goes. I do not enjoy the game solo as much so maybe the fact that we are a group is partially to blame for the game feeling easier than before.
Originally posted by VicodinTaco So paragon levels are not taken into consideration either? Just the base level?
I'm curious about this too because it's hard to tell from what I've been playing. I've gained about a dozen paragon levels since the patch and I haven't noticed it getting much easier but I also went from playing on Master to Torment 2. I won't know until I play for awhile on the same difficulty setting.
I hope it takes paragon levels in to account because we're just going to outlevel any difficulty setting eventually considering there is no cap now. Don't know why they would add dynamic difficulty and make it moot by removing a cap on endless paragon levels at the same time, but I don't understand why they added a RMAH to a loot-collecting driven ARPG either.
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 I thought all "Dynamic Difficulty" meant was that if you enter the game as level 30, the mobs you face are also level 30, regardless of what Act you choose to play. Their level will increase as your level increases. That's all it is. No more level 52 slogging through level 25 mobs who drop level 25 gear.
Yes, and the difficulty level is on top of this. Normal is going to be easy mode at any level, and t6 is going to be hard unless you have super gear.
and it is moot at L70 when there is no more "dynamic" adjustment of levels.
Did they actually say there would be no dynamic adjustment of levels at 70 or is that a guess?
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 I thought all "Dynamic Difficulty" meant was that if you enter the game as level 30, the mobs you face are also level 30, regardless of what Act you choose to play. Their level will increase as your level increases. That's all it is. No more level 52 slogging through level 25 mobs who drop level 25 gear.
Yes, and the difficulty level is on top of this. Normal is going to be easy mode at any level, and t6 is going to be hard unless you have super gear.
and it is moot at L70 when there is no more "dynamic" adjustment of levels.
Did they actually say there would be no dynamic adjustment of levels at 70 or is that a guess?
How can there be "dynamic" adjustment when you level is always going to stay at 70? And the difficulty slider is calibrated at 70 .. meaning that at 70 .. normal will be easy .. and T6 will be impossible for a long while.
It is pretty clear from their description that this is what the set up is. Not different than at L60.
Torment 6 is fun as hell (pun intended lol). I run in there with my friends who are all geared up in perfects, and we still have a hard time doing stuff Before it was boring, but now it's challenging.
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 I thought all "Dynamic Difficulty" meant was that if you enter the game as level 30, the mobs you face are also level 30, regardless of what Act you choose to play. Their level will increase as your level increases. That's all it is. No more level 52 slogging through level 25 mobs who drop level 25 gear.
Yes, and the difficulty level is on top of this. Normal is going to be easy mode at any level, and t6 is going to be hard unless you have super gear.
and it is moot at L70 when there is no more "dynamic" adjustment of levels.
Did they actually say there would be no dynamic adjustment of levels at 70 or is that a guess?
How can there be "dynamic" adjustment when you level is always going to stay at 70? And the difficulty slider is calibrated at 70 .. meaning that at 70 .. normal will be easy .. and T6 will be impossible for a long while.
It is pretty clear from their description that this is what the set up is. Not different than at L60.
There can be dynamic adjustment of levels because you still get paragon levels plus the fact that they can easily raise the cap again and could have it setup to continue past 70 at any time by any number of variables.
Originally posted by VicodinTaco So paragon levels are not taken into consideration either? Just the base level?
Paragon level is only about points ... it has nothing to do with the difficulty.
And where are you getting this? Blizzard can easily code it to increase difficulty by a % of the paragon level based on whatever they feel is comparable to the amount of points you're given to allocate. Any RPG that has dynamic difficulty that lets you allocate points to stats is doing the same thing, so I want to know if that's what they are doing here with paragon levels and scaling.
Dynamic Difficulty: There does seem to be some confusion about the term "Dynamic Difficulty". It simply means that you can, with some limitations, change the difficulty level of the game you are currently playing on the fly just by hitting the escape button and bumping it up or down a notch. This is great because you don't have to restart a game if you are struggling a little or are finding it a little too easy.
Monster Level Scaling: The game does this automatically. Monsters now scale to your level. Doesn't matter what Act your are playing. Doesn't matter what difficulty you choose. You will face monsters that are of your level and proper level gear will drop.
Difficulty Level Scaling: The old difficulty settings have been replaced. There are only two settings to unlock. Master when any of your characters completes the game and Torment when any of your characters reaches lv.60. The player controls how difficult a game they want to play. How hard the game is has nothing to do with character level or quality of gear. It's just a straight forward setting you can choose before you start a game.
Was there a really need to have 4 pages in this? Did no one really answered him?
Dynamic difficulty:
The difficulty system has been completely revised. Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno have been removed, and this tiered system has been replaced with "dynamic difficulty," allowing monsters to level up with your characters.
What does this mean? Monster levels are not tied to Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno levels anymore, they are tied to your character level (paragon doesn't do anything about it), meaning if you are lvl 25 then the monsters are lvl 25 if you lvl up then the monsters become level 26 as well.
Also instead of us having Monster Power 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 we now have the new difficulty settings that range from Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, Torment from I to VI.
What does the new difficulty setting do now? same thing what monster power did, it increase the monster damage by x% and health by x%, it doesn't actually increase the level of the monsters. Except now in Torment you get extra benefits compared to Normal, Hard, Expert, Master... but it will be only at lvl 70, like New legendaries at level 70, this doesn't mean you don't get lvl 70 legendaries in lower difficulty settings it only means different or new legendaries can drop compared to lower difficulty than torment.
TLDR
Monsters are always the same level as you.
Paragon doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Gear doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Difficulty doesn't increase monster levels it increases it's hp and damage by xx%.
Was there a really need to have 4 pages in this? Did no one really answered him?
Dynamic difficulty:
The difficulty system has been completely revised. Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno have been removed, and this tiered system has been replaced with "dynamic difficulty," allowing monsters to level up with your characters.
What does this mean? Monster levels are not tied to Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno levels anymore, they are tied to your character level (paragon doesn't do anything about it), meaning if you are lvl 25 then the monsters are lvl 25 if you lvl up then the monsters become level 26 as well.
Also instead of us having Monster Power 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 we now have the new difficulty settings that range from Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, Torment from I to VI.
What does the new difficulty setting do now? same thing what monster power did, it increase the monster damage by x% and health by x%, it doesn't actually increase the level of the monsters. Except now in Torment you get extra benefits compared to Normal, Hard, Expert, Master... but it will be only at lvl 70, like New legendaries at level 70, this doesn't mean you don't get lvl 70 legendaries in lower difficulty settings it only means different or new legendaries can drop compared to lower difficulty than torment.
TLDR
Monsters are always the same level as you.
Paragon doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Gear doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Difficulty doesn't level monster level it increases it's hp and damage by xx%.
Thank you! Very clear. Note that at L70, monsters are always at L70, and so the level of challenge only depends on the difficulty level.
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 Thanks Irish. I'll bump it up one level of difficulty to see how it goes. I don't want to change it too much at one time on Hardcore...heh.
Was there a really need to have 4 pages in this? Did no one really answered him?
There were clearly other details discussed if you were incapable of reading. A thread will have 4 pages if people want to discuss it for 4 pages. Get used to it if you plan on looking at forums.
Originally posted by Darknessguy64 Thanks Irish. I'll bump it up one level of difficulty to see how it goes. I don't want to change it too much at one time on Hardcore...heh.
I bumped it up even more!!
and..
R.I.P lvl 40 Barbarian. oops...
lol Yeah, it's a fun challenge but the higher difficulties can occasionally throw out an elite pack that bulldozes you in seconds. Doesn't help that I went full blown dps and ditched a lot of resistance gear, but I love my build right now.
lol Yeah, it's a fun challenge but the higher difficulties can occasionally throw out an elite pack that bulldozes you in seconds. Doesn't help that I went full blown dps and ditched a lot of resistance gear, but I love my build right now.
Yeh .. that is why it is fun. I am doing T3 with a reasonably geared wiz .. and usually i can handle everything .. but occasionally .. bam! .. 5 seconds and i am dead.
lol Yeah, it's a fun challenge but the higher difficulties can occasionally throw out an elite pack that bulldozes you in seconds. Doesn't help that I went full blown dps and ditched a lot of resistance gear, but I love my build right now.
Dps is fun for sure.
I am going with a balanced build for my Monk to play it safe, quite literally. A very nice change is that the Monk has a lot more crowd control runes now than he did before. I am using them liberally and they work really well against elites (blind is soooo good).
My biggest problem at the moment is lack of resistances, which I am trying to shore up before I notch up the difficulty. The elemental spells the elites throw at me, especially the chain of fire and poison guys really mess me up more than anything else at the moment. Those two abilities suck for melee.
lol Yeah, it's a fun challenge but the higher difficulties can occasionally throw out an elite pack that bulldozes you in seconds. Doesn't help that I went full blown dps and ditched a lot of resistance gear, but I love my build right now.
Dps is fun for sure.
I am going with a balanced build for my Monk to play it safe, quite literally. A very nice change is that the Monk has a lot more crowd control runes now than he did before. I am using them liberally and they work really well against elites (blind is soooo good).
My biggest problem at the moment is lack of resistances, which I am trying to shore up before I notch up the difficulty. The elemental spells the elites throw at me, especially the chain of fire and poison guys really mess me up more than anything else at the moment. Those two abilities suck for melee.
I am trying for a DPS route for my wiz now .. even with the archon skill where i can have high dps burst to kill elites.
However, it is of high risk .. i do kill faster, but more than occasionally ... some elite will just kill me in seconds before i can respond. Heck, it can happen even with trash if i don't pay attention.
Now that is a real good ARPGs with lots of tactics and strategies on top.
I am trying for a DPS route for my wiz now .. even with the archon skill where i can have high dps burst to kill elites.
However, it is of high risk .. i do kill faster, but more than occasionally ... some elite will just kill me in seconds before i can respond. Heck, it can happen even with trash if i don't pay attention.
Now that is a real good ARPGs with lots of tactics and strategies on top.
I am trying a Wiz now. Since I like crowd control (just look at my sig) I was thinking of going a crowd control + dps route. So far so good and her dps is pretty good for her level. You are pretty courageous (masochistic?) to go a full dps route. There is so much more one can do now with viable builds. It is really great!
Faster you level, the less items you find. The monsters scale according to your level and the difficulty setting. If you did something like start on expert and didn't abuse the crafting, because a new player wouldn't be able to afford it or use high level gems.. you'd level fast but your gear would be seriously lagging behind the power of the monsters. Since it's a gear based game and character level means very little compared to gear.. levelling fast will just make it harder and harder as you go along.
If you have a stash of gold and good gems though, yeh.. playing a new character is easy.
If you doubt this and you've never played a hardcore character.. give it a go. Your artisans, stash and gold isn't shared with hardcore characters... then you'll see.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
The new difficulty levels seem more oriented around XP gain than anything else. (well and I guess more gold too) This mainly concerns level 60 characters going for Paragon levels. (I just read something that Torment has a naturally higher rate of dropping Legendaries though)
Normal mode seems to dish out enough xp on its own (especially with the 50% buff right now) and gear drops scale up based on your level. Once you reach 60 it's all about getting more xp for Paragon levels and min/maxing your gear. You'll want to incrementally raise the difficulty to the point where it's still tolerable while fighting monsters. I think the in-game tooltips for each difficulty level is pretty sufficient.
The new difficulty levels seem more oriented around XP gain than anything else. (well and I guess more gold too) This mainly concerns level 60 characters going for Paragon levels. (I just read something that Torment has a naturally higher rate of dropping Legendaries though)
Normal mode seems to dish out enough xp on its own (especially with the 50% buff right now) and gear drops scale up based on your level. Once you reach 60 it's all about getting more xp for Paragon levels and min/maxing your gear. You'll want to incrementally raise the difficulty to the point where it's still tolerable while fighting monsters. I think the in-game tooltips for each difficulty level is pretty sufficient.
I am already at L60 for a while.
It is a bit more than just min-maxing gear. That is of course part of it. However, since gear now comes with skill modifiers, it is about creating builds around the good gear you find.
I found a leg amulet with 22% arcane damage, and the ability to create bombs orbiting my toon. I am not going to replace it with a mere 5-10% dps upgrade because 22% is just too good for distintegration beam (and other arcane oriented) build. It has the added synergy to temporal flux which gives my attack natural cc.
I am sure I will have to ditch it after the expansion hit .. but this is exactly the kind of fun i like at end game.
Comments
Yes, and the difficulty level is on top of this. Normal is going to be easy mode at any level, and t6 is going to be hard unless you have super gear.
and it is moot at L70 when there is no more "dynamic" adjustment of levels.
This was the problem me and my group ran into. We started at hard and immediately went to expert. After about 3 hours of that we were all about 31 and wondering why the game felt pretty easy but wasn't sure what setting to try next time we play. I had this same discussion in another thread and was going to jump straight to torment but we may just try master and see how that goes. I do not enjoy the game solo as much so maybe the fact that we are a group is partially to blame for the game feeling easier than before.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
I'm curious about this too because it's hard to tell from what I've been playing. I've gained about a dozen paragon levels since the patch and I haven't noticed it getting much easier but I also went from playing on Master to Torment 2. I won't know until I play for awhile on the same difficulty setting.
I hope it takes paragon levels in to account because we're just going to outlevel any difficulty setting eventually considering there is no cap now. Don't know why they would add dynamic difficulty and make it moot by removing a cap on endless paragon levels at the same time, but I don't understand why they added a RMAH to a loot-collecting driven ARPG either.
Did they actually say there would be no dynamic adjustment of levels at 70 or is that a guess?
Paragon level is only about points ... it has nothing to do with the difficulty.
How can there be "dynamic" adjustment when you level is always going to stay at 70? And the difficulty slider is calibrated at 70 .. meaning that at 70 .. normal will be easy .. and T6 will be impossible for a long while.
It is pretty clear from their description that this is what the set up is. Not different than at L60.
There can be dynamic adjustment of levels because you still get paragon levels plus the fact that they can easily raise the cap again and could have it setup to continue past 70 at any time by any number of variables.
And where are you getting this? Blizzard can easily code it to increase difficulty by a % of the paragon level based on whatever they feel is comparable to the amount of points you're given to allocate. Any RPG that has dynamic difficulty that lets you allocate points to stats is doing the same thing, so I want to know if that's what they are doing here with paragon levels and scaling.
Dynamic Difficulty: There does seem to be some confusion about the term "Dynamic Difficulty". It simply means that you can, with some limitations, change the difficulty level of the game you are currently playing on the fly just by hitting the escape button and bumping it up or down a notch. This is great because you don't have to restart a game if you are struggling a little or are finding it a little too easy.
Monster Level Scaling: The game does this automatically. Monsters now scale to your level. Doesn't matter what Act your are playing. Doesn't matter what difficulty you choose. You will face monsters that are of your level and proper level gear will drop.
Difficulty Level Scaling: The old difficulty settings have been replaced. There are only two settings to unlock. Master when any of your characters completes the game and Torment when any of your characters reaches lv.60. The player controls how difficult a game they want to play. How hard the game is has nothing to do with character level or quality of gear. It's just a straight forward setting you can choose before you start a game.
Hope this helps clear up some confusion.
Was there a really need to have 4 pages in this? Did no one really answered him?
Dynamic difficulty:
The difficulty system has been completely revised. Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno have been removed, and this tiered system has been replaced with "dynamic difficulty," allowing monsters to level up with your characters.
What does this mean? Monster levels are not tied to Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno levels anymore, they are tied to your character level (paragon doesn't do anything about it), meaning if you are lvl 25 then the monsters are lvl 25 if you lvl up then the monsters become level 26 as well.
Also instead of us having Monster Power 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 we now have the new difficulty settings that range from Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, Torment from I to VI.
What does the new difficulty setting do now? same thing what monster power did, it increase the monster damage by x% and health by x%, it doesn't actually increase the level of the monsters. Except now in Torment you get extra benefits compared to Normal, Hard, Expert, Master... but it will be only at lvl 70, like New legendaries at level 70, this doesn't mean you don't get lvl 70 legendaries in lower difficulty settings it only means different or new legendaries can drop compared to lower difficulty than torment.
TLDR
Monsters are always the same level as you.
Paragon doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Gear doesn't affect monster stats or levels.
Difficulty doesn't increase monster levels it increases it's hp and damage by xx%.
Thank you! Very clear. Note that at L70, monsters are always at L70, and so the level of challenge only depends on the difficulty level.
I bumped it up even more!!
and..
R.I.P lvl 40 Barbarian. oops...
There were clearly other details discussed if you were incapable of reading. A thread will have 4 pages if people want to discuss it for 4 pages. Get used to it if you plan on looking at forums.
lol Yeah, it's a fun challenge but the higher difficulties can occasionally throw out an elite pack that bulldozes you in seconds. Doesn't help that I went full blown dps and ditched a lot of resistance gear, but I love my build right now.
Yeh .. that is why it is fun. I am doing T3 with a reasonably geared wiz .. and usually i can handle everything .. but occasionally .. bam! .. 5 seconds and i am dead.
Dps is fun for sure.
I am going with a balanced build for my Monk to play it safe, quite literally. A very nice change is that the Monk has a lot more crowd control runes now than he did before. I am using them liberally and they work really well against elites (blind is soooo good).
My biggest problem at the moment is lack of resistances, which I am trying to shore up before I notch up the difficulty. The elemental spells the elites throw at me, especially the chain of fire and poison guys really mess me up more than anything else at the moment. Those two abilities suck for melee.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I am trying for a DPS route for my wiz now .. even with the archon skill where i can have high dps burst to kill elites.
However, it is of high risk .. i do kill faster, but more than occasionally ... some elite will just kill me in seconds before i can respond. Heck, it can happen even with trash if i don't pay attention.
Now that is a real good ARPGs with lots of tactics and strategies on top.
I am trying a Wiz now. Since I like crowd control (just look at my sig) I was thinking of going a crowd control + dps route. So far so good and her dps is pretty good for her level. You are pretty courageous (masochistic?) to go a full dps route. There is so much more one can do now with viable builds. It is really great!
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Faster you level, the less items you find. The monsters scale according to your level and the difficulty setting. If you did something like start on expert and didn't abuse the crafting, because a new player wouldn't be able to afford it or use high level gems.. you'd level fast but your gear would be seriously lagging behind the power of the monsters. Since it's a gear based game and character level means very little compared to gear.. levelling fast will just make it harder and harder as you go along.
If you have a stash of gold and good gems though, yeh.. playing a new character is easy.
If you doubt this and you've never played a hardcore character.. give it a go. Your artisans, stash and gold isn't shared with hardcore characters... then you'll see.
The new difficulty levels seem more oriented around XP gain than anything else. (well and I guess more gold too) This mainly concerns level 60 characters going for Paragon levels. (I just read something that Torment has a naturally higher rate of dropping Legendaries though)
Normal mode seems to dish out enough xp on its own (especially with the 50% buff right now) and gear drops scale up based on your level. Once you reach 60 it's all about getting more xp for Paragon levels and min/maxing your gear. You'll want to incrementally raise the difficulty to the point where it's still tolerable while fighting monsters. I think the in-game tooltips for each difficulty level is pretty sufficient.
I am already at L60 for a while.
It is a bit more than just min-maxing gear. That is of course part of it. However, since gear now comes with skill modifiers, it is about creating builds around the good gear you find.
I found a leg amulet with 22% arcane damage, and the ability to create bombs orbiting my toon. I am not going to replace it with a mere 5-10% dps upgrade because 22% is just too good for distintegration beam (and other arcane oriented) build. It has the added synergy to temporal flux which gives my attack natural cc.
I am sure I will have to ditch it after the expansion hit .. but this is exactly the kind of fun i like at end game.