Simply Simon posted:

Let me try for anyone watching. Key to understanding Diablo 3's on paper weird-rear end level scaling is that originally, the game tried to do things normally, Diablo 2 style, and it failed at that. It already had the gameplay of a slick, flexible, super dynamic action game, but STILL wanted, no, needed the player to farm for hours and hours with very low drop chances to get gear to even come close to progressing further in the highest difficulty. Inferno was stupidly unfun to play and drew a lot of flak, very deservedly. I still liked the game in general because I've never been one to push Diablo to the limits - I have probably started at least 30 characters in Diablo 2 but brought at max TWO of them above level 80 - so I'd just start a new char class in D3 and hosed around with that. But for many people, something was deeply wrong because D3 didn't really know what it wanted to be at all.

This is why they introduced the level scaling thing. See, the key issue with challenge in a Diablo game is that it doesn't actually need to be there. People spent ages figuring out the absolute best ways to farm bosses and levels (so...more bosses) and cows and poo poo in Diablo 2 so they could avoid challenge - make characters better and better and better and drive the numbers up so everything dies from you looking at it funny! That is why you play these hack&slash games, they're not meant to be Dark Souls difficult, you just want to mutilate thousands of demons in milliseconds.

But on the OTHER hand, Diablo 2 had always the problem of where to go next. Once your build was finished, you could only push numbers further, and that meant optimizing some items slots that were 99.999% perfect anyway, and get some more stats that honestly mattered jackshit, and so on. The endgame was terrible unless you were REALLY into Baal runs because you could do nothing BUT endlessly farm - and that is truly not everybody's cookie.

Enter The Solution: level scaling and adjustable difficulty. Diablo 3 is completely removed from being a standard RPG now. In fact, it no longer needs a story mode. If you have finished that once, you can start a new character, put it in the new Adventure Mode that everyone plays at, and just go wherever, immediately. This is how you fight the final boss at level 1 - you just go there. Everytime you start the game, there's different objectives you can finish in the entire game world, and those "bounties" give you rewards mostly in the form of items - one legendary (Unique) guaranteed. You can gamble for set and legendary items with a VERY high chance. You can MAKE legendaries with a simple recipe.

The idea is you start the game and within one or two play sessions, you are at max level, and within another play session you have half of a super endgame set and the best weapon (sans uber stats!) you could possibly have. You can have any build you want with just a few hours of investment, you no longer have to farm for months just to trade for ONE item (which, in D2's case, might just be duped). In fact, you can't trade at all anymore. You will find your poo poo though, guaranteed.

Then you experiment, because you can switch your build anytime. Element, as said, doesn't matter. Fire char? Whatever. Nothing's immune. Bored of setting things on fire? A few clicks, and you freeze them instead. Found an amazing Arcane weapon? Do that instead! And while you're toying, you slowly get better and better stuff. You finish the endgame set. And you gain levels beyond the normal maximum, that raise you stats sloooooowly but surely higher and higher and higher.

NOW you start challenging yourself. You can put the difficulty as high as you want. It's not just Normal, Nightmare and Hell - the scale has NO UPPER END. Can you finish a bounty run on Torment level 50? Can you survive against crazy Uber bosses for sick drops in a group of four people...at Torment 40? Do you want to risk it? How high does the slider go? Will this new ring allow you to put one more notch on it?


As you can see, Diablo 3 has gone full arcade, and I love it for that. It's now completely different from D2, and that's a good thing - everything that was like D2 dragged it down because it always wanted to be its own thing. Now it finally is, and it owns. Slice those monsters, push those Torment levels. Just don't worry about "ugh but my levels don't matter anymore???" - that's the point!