Diablo III’s popularity is mostly blessing for its designers, but a little bit curse. Unlike every other action RPG dev team ever, they have to worry about its endgame. To that end, they introduced Paragon levels to the game a little over a year ago, to ensure an ongoing sense of progression when item drought hit.
It wasn’t all good, however, and with 2014’s Paragon 2.0 update Blizzard plan to solve at least one “unfortunate side effect” of those 100 extra levels. It seems some players have been compelled to tie themselves up in a single character forever.
Players with a Paragon level 50 Wizard, for instance, have struggled to convince themselves to try other classes for fear of ‘wasting experience’.
“We want the players to feel that they are being rewarded for their time investment regardless of what character they are in the mood to play or experiment with,” explains top-ranking Diablo III designer Travis Day. “This is the primary reason we are changing paragon levels to be account wide instead of character specific.”
He went on: “We want people who have invested time earning paragon experience to be able to enjoy all the changes and new content the expansion introduces without having a sense of loss for ‘wasting paragon levels’ on a character.
“Especially since the Crusader is so awesome I expect 200% of players to just reroll,” Day added, with a cheeky/saucy/jokey wink.
That last bit was a plug for 2014 expansion Reaper of Souls, by the way, and the new Crusader class that comes crashing in with it.
Have you suffered from this intangible sense of mourning that comes with trying a new character? If so, did you manage to overcome it?
Thanks, Diablo Fans.