Would YOU buy a new expansion for Diablo II/LOD?

[Void Stalker]

Hello folks, I'm new here and I have been wanting to inquire about some ideas that I have for better D2.

My ideas are for allowing folks that buy a new expansion, to create another/alternate set of characters in addition to Classic/Expansion. I envision a new expansion, let's call it Diablo II 2020, that keeps almost everything that already exists in D2/LOD. In fact, I'm thinking about content spread out over 4 expansions, but maybe one expansion with three upgrade packs, which you would have to earn the right to purchase by successfully beating the previous games.

First off, I love my gaming time, and don't like being forced to play longer and longer to improve my characters once level 70 has been achieved. Looking at the XP rate reductions starting at level 70, I realized that Blizzard was attempting to keep people from achieving level 99, as that way the players wouldn't all have the vaunted (and uselessly dead end) 99th level characters. If you look at the excel spread sheet that I'll provide, it seems to show (If I have actually done it correctly and error free, which may not be a given, lol) that the experience points (XP) needed to reach the dead end of level 99 is something like 3.5 Billion. That's a high number, but doable if folks were determined and willing to put the time in. What isn't good though, is that when you take into account how much XP you are not getting (for no good reason), by the time you have reached level 88 now, you would already have earned more than enough to have earned level 99 without this arbitrary reduction. And for what, to keep everyone from having 99th level characters? And just what good does it do you to get a character to level 99? Sure, it's a prestige thing, but what good is that character that can never improve, can never get better, can never get more powerful, ever?

So I began, many years ago, to envision a system that didn't dead end at 99. My thinking is that, if we could actually keep all the XP we earned, rather than having it arbitrarily reduced for no good reason, we could all get a sense of closure when achieving the highest level. But wait, what if 99 was NOT the end?

My vision is that we would have, in this hypothetical new blizzard expansion, a few changes, so something like this:

1. New expansion (DII 2020) characters would start off below level 1.
2. Upon achieving level 1, a player then chooses the class that they wish to play as.
3. Upon selecting your class, you gain your first skill point, and 5 attribute points.
4. At the upper end, you max out at level 100.
5. After getting a new expansion character to level 100, and meeting the additional requirements/prerequisites, you can then choose to attempt to complete a final quest, and upon successful completion, your character is reborn!
6. I call such characters ReMorts, as in Re-Mortal, or reborn.
7. A ReMort (RM) character starts off just like a brand new character does, with one exception.
8. Additional expansions or upgrade packs would continue this additional replayability, with more content.

So, what are all these 8 points above?

#1-3
Right now, any archer based character is white/female/blond. But what if you wanted to be male and be an archer? Right now, that cannot be done, but the first thing I would do is let folks customize their characters sex and race at the outset. In crude terms, you should be allowed to be black or white, red or yellow, or even purple with pink polka dots if you want (Ok, not really, but you get the idea) so some new work would need to be done to to allow this feature. This would mean that you should get to pick your characters race yourself, and not have it arbitrarily assigned by the game designers. Back in the 1990's, I played a crude little game series on the commodore 64, and there were several titles in that series. IIRC, those games had the following titles.

Pool of Radiance
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Secret of the Silver Blades
Pools of Darkness

Now, I know that these games came out years before Diablo II, but one thing that the programmers learned/knew back then, was that folks wanted to be able to make choices about their character's appearance, and included a way to customize your character appearance right from the start. In D2, in unfavorable comparison, you cannot just change how your character looks, other than by changing your equipment itself. This is bad, but not even being able to select your character's sex is even worse.

Let us fast forward to an act V quest, namely the "Personalization" quest reward you get from Anya. Does anyone even use this quest? And what all does it do, allow you to put your name upon an item, that only really shows up when you toss it on the ground?!?! Really!? I think that being able to alter the appearance of a single item, if only by changing color/tint, and only by a little, each time you use this quest reward, so that to make some really nice looking alternate items would be far and away more enjoyed, and much sought after, than just adding a name. If we had Anya opening up a cube, where we put in the item to be personalized, and ingredients acquired elsewhere, to influence the type of change in a direction of our choosing...

Anyway, to continue this, you would start off at a pre-class selection screen, where you would pick your new characters sex and race. At this point, you would have a generic looking character, at level 0.0. Next, you could elect to play a very short set of challenges, that would take you into combat with some different situations, that teaches you some essential elements of the game, and would allow you to gain .1 levels at a time, and earn Aptitude points and Specialization points (NOT to be confused with attribute and skill points) that have to do with some additional game content, and also with slightly buffing your character's appearance. After earning generic level one, you then proceed to pick a class, which then grants you your character's first 5 Attribute points and 1 Skill point.

Note, my computer is acting a bit wonkey, and so I'll post this right now, and continue shortly.

#4
I would have folks gaining their full XP at 70th level and thereafter, without any useless reductions like currently, as level 99/100 is no longer the end of a characters progression, for those willing to attempt a final quest to be able to keep going...

#5-6
I'm of two minds here, and so need advice. Should the final quest be able to be attempted but once, and the outcome permanent? What I have in mind is that the character, whether successful or not, dies in the quest attempt, but if successful, is ReMorted to live a new life.

#7
This is a big thing, and the benefits of successfully RM your character, perhaps over and over again, cannot be overstated. I'm working on some screen shots, to graphically show exactly what I'm thinking of, and will not cover this until I can show what I'm talking about. I'll just say, what I am envisioning would stand the entire Diablo playing world on end. Not even kidding, note even a little bit.

I cannot leave it at that!!!
You think you know how to play the game, you think you know all there is to know, you think you know the best builds, the best Mercenary items and combinations? Think again!

Or said another way, I'll just use this quote from a movie I love. HERE.

#8
Once folks figure things out, and get some RM characters up and running, they would be able to unlock additional expansion packs/upgrades for purchase, that would further expand and extend a characters life indefinitely.

I'm sorry for the teaser for the main point (#7), but I really need to have the edited screen shots ready to post, before I go there.

Have I got your interest up?

How about a little bit more...?

What if, you didn't have to fire your mercenary to get a different one, but could just 'lay them off' for awhile?
What if, you could tweak some character classes, and rock the world on it's axis by doing nothing more than that?

Up next, Mercenary ideas, class modifications, and some ideas on differentiation of characters by storyline progression.

 

[Dacar92]

Some of this stuff is already in D3 (such as transmog, male/female characters, hiring mercs) and some of the rest would be nice for D4. While it is nice to dream of a new expansion for D2 it will never happen.

Getting to level 100 would not be a issue for about 10% or 20% of players. Just a guess there, but most players never reach level 90 before they get bored and start something new. So making level 100 something to try to reach, it would have to be made easier. Instead of thousands of CS/Baal runs it would need to be something else that gets you there.

Nevertheless, I like that you're thinking about this and I hope Blizz sees it and incorporates some into D4.

 

[Void Stalker]

I have not posted my excel sheet yet, but IIRC, anyone that has earned level 88 right now, has actually earned level 99 and then some, as that is the difference made by the experience reduction starting at level 70. So as stated, folks would indeed be able to get to level 100 in my proposed Diablo II 2020 expansion way faster than folks reach 90th level now. Another way of comparing the XP ripoff going on right now, is that folks that reach level 84 right now, are just shy of what they would otherwise need to reach level 90.

I agree with you, folks just get bored by an endgame that is a total grind, slow, and just dead ends.

Actually, perhaps I can post a screen shot of the excel sheet, and then folks can see what I did (wrong) and tell me what they think.

Spoiler

In the sheet above, in the upper right hand corner is the actual XP you will have earned to achieve level 88 under the current (and useless) XP reduction scheme, while in the lower left corner we see the 'supposed to be' XP needed to gain level 99. And, just so it is clear, the lower right hand corner shows the XP you would actually have to earn, under the current system, to reach level 99. Note, this does not consider any effect of altered earned Experience from unique charms.

I don't have D3, so could you tell me a bit more about the things you have mentioned?

 

[Void Stalker]

I should probably have had this image ready to go before I posted this, but here is a (hopefully) better image, and I'll work the image to explain what things are, and graphicly display just how much of an improvement to end game play would be had.

Spoiler

So, looking at the chart, check out the red box in the LR corner. Yep, 157 BXP! You are supposed to be able to hit level 99 at 3.5 BXP, but with the rip-off in place, anyone that has a 99th level character (in the current patches) will have had to earn 157 BXP.

In other words, if you got to 99, you really earned about 44 99th level characters worth of experience points. Using my notional ReMort system, and level 100 costing 4.0 BXP, you would have, for every 99th level character earned right now, 39 100th level guys.
Or, another way of looking at it, you could ReMort a single character, over and over and over again, over thirty times, and each time gaining a reward that couldn't be had by any non ReMort character.

A character that had used the ReMort system to the extent that players have played their dead end characters too, would be almost as bad-ass as a party of 99th level characters, all by themselves.

 

[Void Stalker]

So, to continue this...

Been busy and distracted from getting this posted, but here we go. Still not posting the actual main benefits of remorting, as that involves more editing of screen shots than the stuff in this post.

In this post I'm covering one of the more important of my pet peeves with how characters are not properly scaled with respect to their story line progression.

For me, a brand new character should be far less than one that has completed the entire storyline, let alone one that has done so in all difficulty settings, and one way that I think should be looked at is item storage capacity. Right now, a character created as nothing more than an additional place to store additional items (a.k.a. a Mule), that never leaves town, kills any monsters, completes any quests or gains any levels, has exactly the same item storage & maximum gold holding capacity as a veteran character, and for me, this is a sign of lazy programing. As such, I would want to have this 'problem' fixed in my proverbial future expansion, so that a newly created character never has as much item/gold storage as a veteran character does. Below are some painstakingly crafted images where I try to show how I would like to see this initially corrected.

So, when a brand new guy is created, this is what I would want their stash to look like...

Spoiler

Initially:

Spoiler

So, a new character would have their 10X4 inventory, but just a 2X4 stash, as just how much stuff should a new character be able to store? Keeping in mind that this is just what I would want a newbie to have, and if you want more storage, you have to earn it by advancing your character/mule within the storyline. And just how should this be implemented, you ask? Well, we already have an ingame point where every character gains access to additional areas of the game, by beating an act boss, or even beating an entire difficulty setting, and so this is where I would add additional storage to a characters file.

So a starting character would have just the 8 space stash seen above, but after killing Andariel (which I feel deserves a reward of some kind), they would have this:

Spoiler

After Andariel:

Again, not much storage, but a little bit more than before, and storyline progression now becomes a thing. Want more storage space, earn it!

Keeping things going alone the same vein, a character that has overcome Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo and Baal would have a stash like this:

Spoiler

After Duriel:

A little more storage, for a little more progress in game. At this point, we have reached the stash size of a classic character! We can all probably remember our joy when we first saw the size of the Lord of Destruction expansion stash size! So at this point, my conjectured expansion would continue to increase the storage capacity above and beyond what classic allows, as follows.

After Mephisto:

After Diablo:

After Baal:

So, once your character defeats all five acts in norman difficulty, we achieve a maximum stash size of 12X4, which looks different from an LOD stash, even though they both hold 48 spaces worth of stuff. But wait, there is more...

At this point, there would be some additional storage increases, but they will have to wait for a future post, as they are not story line progression based, but work on something else.

Now that you have a character than is in a higher difficulty setting, getting additional storage space is very important, but killing a particular act boss isn't going to do it, rather, and entire difficulty setting must be cleared to gain more storage, so...

After Nightmare:

Now we're talking, you get a character into hell, and you start getting some good additional storage capacity. The Hell capable character now has a 12X8 stash size, so double what the LOD stash can hold.

After Hell:

Now we see a character that has beaten the three, on all difficulty settings, and is rewarded with a Giant stash, with 12X12 storage capacity. Right now though, lets look at the maximum stash size that can fit on an 800 x 600 screen.

For a character that has beaten all three difficulty settings, when would they earn additional storage?

After ReMort:

So now we have pretty much as much storage space that we can get, and without having to resort to multiple screens. Here we see the max stash of a ReMort character, with 12X16 storage capacity. As a little teaser, here is an image of things to come...

Things to come:

So, this is just to show what is possible, without having to increase screen resolution. Here is a 12X16 stash opened up next too a character screen, where the inventory is also increased in size. Now obviously, I have not covered everything yet regarding storage capacity on a character, rather just specifically with respect to the stash size, and nothing at all about increasing a character's inventory size at all, but this shows just how much wasted space there was in the LOD screens.

Anyway, all this post is supposed to do is begin to cover some of the lesser aspects of my desired future expansion, and that is with respect to additional stash specific storage capacity tied to storyline progression. Hopefully this weekend, I can get my butt moving this along, and get to the main point(s) of why ReMort characters would make everything earlier obsolete, and why folks would want to pursue continuing play with their 100th level characters, and then ReMorting them into starting characters all over again.

Any thoughts?

 

[Void Stalker]

Here is a screen shot, of how I would picture the character creation initial screen looking like.

The main idea here is to show how my ReMort idea could be implemented as a choice for a specific character. So if you wanted to try out the whole ReMort idea, you just click on the box, and that character is created as one who can be ReMorted if you play it that long (all the way to 100th level), while other characters could continue being created for use in the current manner. In a discussion elsewhere, the idea too separate Fast Track into it's own thing came up, and this would allow folks to play without the XP reductions inflicted after clvl 69 currently, without making them play with the ReMort option, so they would dead end at level 99, but get there much more quickly than current characters can.

Of course, if you wanted to check both ReMort and Fast Track boxes, then such a character would opt out of the XP reductions, and be able to ReMort at level 100.

I'm currently working on some screen shots to show how the XP reductions work, and where the clvl 100 would come in...

 

[zarniwoop]

I would buy any official Diablo expansion for any Diablo product.

Edit: Unless it was mobile. **** mobile content. Who the hell plays mobile games anyways?

If you answered "me", well then please forgive me.

 

[Void Stalker]

I would buy any official Diablo expansion for any Diablo product.

Edit: Unless it was mobile. **** mobile content. Who the hell plays mobile games anyways?

If you answered "me", well then please forgive me.

Great!

I also would not be in the market for mobile content.

Can you give me some pointers on the ReMort and Fast Track ideas along the lines of am I on the right track? Would folks play with those options if they became available? Thank your for your response to this thread, and hoping for more....

 

[Void Stalker]

I would have the GUI modified something like this, to allow access to a ReMorts skills:

Spoiler

On the top of the skill screen, there would be seven buttons, labeled for each of the seven classed in the game, where the character's current class would be highlighted in green, and former classes would be highlighted in yellow, and classes that had not previously been played would be grayed out, as shown below.

Since it is easier to just use the screen shots of an existing character, all these demonstration screen shots will be from my 88th level Necromancer CryptRaider-A. So, in the image above, this particular ReMort character would currently be a Nerco, and would not have previously ReMorted as any other character class.

Spoiler

In this screen shot, we are once again looking at a (current) Necro, but a former Amazon.

Now, if I indeed had a Necro that had ReMorted from the Amazon class, I would just click on the Zon tab, and show what skill(s) they had kept from their past life/(lives) as a Zon, but since this is just hypothetical at this point, there is no need.

Spoiler

Here is an image.

Tell me the classes that comprise the former lives of this current Necro?

Spoiler

Here is what an endgame ReMort character would look like, with all classes previously played as at least once.

My thinking with regards to multiple $10 expansions/upgrades, is to limit the initial classes that a player can play as, so as to give an incentive to continue purchasing and playing D2. I wouldn't want to unlock all seven classes in the first expansion, nor would I want to limit folks to just the same class that they had previously played as, IE, once a paladin, ALWAYS a paladin. My current thinking is to unlock the other classes in a 4-1-1-1 manner, so folks starting off could potentially have a character with skills from up to 4 classes, and to unlock the other three classes, they would have to buy the other three expansions/upgrade packs. Of course, there would be a great many other things that would go into those products, so it wouldn't just be the unlocking of an additional class and nothing else.

The goal would be to eventually make a character that could have skills from all classes, or even have all skills from all classes!

 

[Ultimatium1]

Yes i would, although it would probably be with a bit of skepticism, since the people from blizzard north who made the original diablo games are long gone. Im not a big fan of activision, so if they have a say in the final product, i might hesitate to buy it.

 

[Void Stalker]

Hello, and thanks for your reply.

I hear ya on the potential for things to not go right.

Are there any specifics you would can to address on any of my proposals above?