As it stands, the level increment of zones is a killjoy

Wicked Feedback
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When you complete a zone/chapter, usually by defeating a big boss, the entire playground gets a “level increment”, meaning new and stronger monsters replace the ones you knew in every zone.

I think many share the experience of entering Sacrament and coming back to The Shallows only to find heavy armored Risens instead of the familiar horseshoe crabs…

This is a recurring pattern throughout the game, where it feels like you are punished for advancing the story, trapped in some kind of rat race you’re constantly losing.

And it’s a sour experience.

One of the strengths of the game is exploration, and personally, I would love to come back at an earlier zone and have my hands free to find secrets and shortcuts I missed. It is in fact the complete opposite, to the point you feel forced to go into the new zone and farm for levels and equipment upgrades before you get to enjoy the game again.

It feels artificial and unfair. I don’t think that’s the intended effect.

But if it is the intended effect, you should know the sudden bump in difficulty is extremely jarring. I used the word “trapped” earlier, and it is exactly how I felt when monsters far above my grade trounced me at a place I had just cleaned.

The game doesn’t prepare you enough for this. Talking to NPCs does give the impression the plague worsen with time and renders beasts fiercer, but perhaps a cut-scene after each zone (a dark wind sweeping across Sacra, for example) would help easing players into their new reality.

Additionally, you might want to space out the level increments a bit, maybe with a mid-boss early into the new zone as an intermediary step. Going from 12 to 14 then 16, instead of 12 to 16.

I expect a lot of players will quit over this, simply because we expect a logical progression of difficulty. A progression that makes sense, if not mechanically, at least narratively. Your current system does neither.

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Our opinions are completely opposite, It actually bothers me that the old areas aren’t exactly at your level and are often slightly weaker than the new areas (especially for the post game).

One of the things I like most about the game is the combat, and fighting enemies lower than my level isn’t as fun as fighting enemies at the appropriate level.

The system is a very nice way to increase the game’s replayability.

And the progression is perfectly natural and logical: on Sacra Island, there are multiple factions at war with each other, and when you’re not there, one of them takes control of the areas you’ve already defeated (obviously, since you’ve weakened the faction that was previously controlling the area).

The fact that this system exists already makes the world more immersive, But it would be nice to find the various factions fighting each other every now and then to improve immersion.

It’s not very clear to me how “it ruins the exploration“ since you can just face the enemies and explore after.

But in any case, if it bothers you, you can lower the difficulty when re-exploring an old area and adjust it again when you find a new area.

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Its not a level scaling like we saw in games such as Oblivion though, here we have different enemies, factions, and the shallows even changes, devs added new shortcuts, barred some entrances, so its not cheap leveling either imo.

Only thing i dont like is the plague system, i dont care about it, if the devs put an option for me to clear the area of that once and for all im good, just let me make some progress, plague broke out in the shallows? Fine, i will deal with it, its my prerrogative, but that has to be a one time event in that area.

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Yes, it’s true, there are also structures that change over time and based on the faction that occupies the area, and I’m sure that once the more important updates are released, this mechanic will be further enriched.

I think the game is better with the plague system than without it, but I agree that it still needs to be redefined.

In particular, I find it annoying that the areas are low level, like level 24, even if the player is level 30. To get the plagued areas to level 30, you have to sacrifice items.

But this process doesn’t just level up the enemies, it also gives you curses that sometimes completely ruin the experience, like if you get one, you lose 100% of your focus on focus use, and if you’re a wizard, you can no longer combine skills, and even if at first it seems like an interesting limitation, you end up always spamming the same rune as soon as you have it.

There are also other curses that can be interesting the first time you find them, but then they only end up limiting the approach to combat, which therefore becomes less interesting and fun.

There are a lot of issues with the atmosphere.
The distortion at the edges of the screen is slightly nauseating, but I can’t turn it off. And the areas that were once colorful and beautiful are now purple, and the soundtrack isn’t particularly beautiful. At first, these things create the right atmosphere, but after a while, they just become an annoying repetition.

Then there is also the problem that the daily and weekly missions are “covered” by the plagued areas and therefore you can not do them unless you clean the area, or you have to go to the crucible to clean the entire map and including the plagued areas that you want to clean: it often happened to me that I wanted to do a mission to get a weapon that I want and then clean a different area with that weapon, but to do it you either have to complete the entire area that you do not want to re-explore to get the weapon, or you do half a run of the crucible that you did not want to do and clean all the areas, do the mission and then go to the area you want to re-explore and make it plagued again by sacrificing items. It’s unnecessarily complicated, It would be better if the missions were present inside the area instead of being “covered”.

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I agree. I felt like every time I achieved a milestone the game became grindier and less fun.

I understand the idea, in fact I don’t mind the idea.

But in Diablo 2 terms, I feel like I killed Baal and then every monster in the game became Lister the Tormentor.

There’s no place with Fallen or Hell Bovines anymore, it’s all just replaced with the most bulletsponge high damage monster.