Yes you're right, I was going to come back and correct what I said, but you did a better job than I would have. I think they have set it up that way to try to try to get players more invested in individual characters, and ensure that there is a steady progression of better loot all the way up to Inferno. All designed to get us to care about the auction house. I genuinely think the game will be much more enjoyable when and if some group creates a good server emulator.
eunichron wrote on May 22, 2012, 01:47:
Dev wrote on May 22, 2012, 01:17:
entr0py wrote on May 22, 2012, 01:15:
That is absolutely my No. 1 complaint about the game as well. In order to play on any of the fun difficulty levels you have to complete the entire game on normal (easy) once for EVERY character class. I was expecting all the online hassles, but I never thought they could screw up the difficulty so badly. It just about single-handedly ruins the game, it's not any fun this way.
Wait. WTF!? Easy on EVERY CHARACTER class? I thought I'd only need to play it once ever. How freaking boring is that. D2 wasn't that way I don't think.
I think his wording was a bit off... you don't have to complete normal with every class to play Nightmare/Hell/Inferno at all, you only have to complete it for that specific character. There is a linear progression, i.e. to play Hell you have to defeat Nightmare, to play Inferno you have to defeat Hell and be level 60 (max level). Diablo 2 was that way as well, and the reasoning is that the health and damage of the mobs are scaled up, as are the item drops (essentially the first mob in Normal is level 1, the first mob in Nightmare would be level 30). However, unlike Diablo 2, in Diablo 3 once you beat Normal you don't have to do the quests or acts in order on subsequent difficulties. For example I was just in a coop Nightmare game with a friend, we were on Act III, we were level 46-ish. Our third friend jumped in with his level 36 Witch Doctor who had only completed Act I Nightmare, but he was able to join us when we were half way through Act III. It also seems that our other friend got an experience boost as he caught up to us in levels fairly quickly. We finished all of Act III and he was level 43 or 44 while we were both 49.
I believe only Diablo 1 allowed you to choose a difficulty starting from level 1, but if I remember correctly you still had to complete the game on Normal with any character before you could play the harder difficulties.