Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Diablo 3: Making Paragon More Interesting

Paragon levels have come a long way since its original implementation in response to making endgame play more rewarding. While it is nice to gain points that can be allocated into free stats of your choice, the static stats gained seem to be a rather bland usage of Paragon points that will eventually boil down to spending Paragon points into one's primary attribute (STR, DEX, INT) or Vitality. To put it another way, endgame character progression in terms of Paragon is largely uninteresting because the player levels up, gains a point, and spends it on stats. Why not spice it up a bit?

After a long discussion with a friend on this topic and some thinking, I have come up with a possible method of making Paragon leveling more interesting and rewarding, particularly when it comes to the facet of RPG-style character development and customization that some players complain Diablo 3 lacks (though it can be argued that the various ways a player can build their character in terms of Active and Passive skills is customization). This system is called Nephalem Prowess.

What is Nephalem Prowess and how does it work? Nephalem Prowess uses a talent tree style design to allow a player to greatly improve their character, making Paragon farming rewarding. At level 60, the player gains a prowess point to spend. Every 25 Paragon levels grants another prowess point. To advance to the next tier in the prowess tree, 4 points must be spent in the tier. This means that by the 5th tier, a player is Paragon level 500. To max out the entire tree, a player has to reach 1550 Paragon. Additional tiers can be added later on.

Here is an example of some Nephalem Prowess effects players can acquire:



In the end, while this Nephalem Prowess suggestion doesn't necessarily need to be in-game, making Paragon leveling more interesting would help make the endgame more rewarding, which is the reason the Paragon system was implemented to begin with.

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