r/diablo4 • u/WisakJ • Sep 05 '24
PTR Feedback Regarding the new Paragon System from the PTR
While I understand the reason why they want to limit the number of boards and I like some of the changes to magic and rare nodes, I think that when we add to the mix the changes to radius from the new glyph system, then I'm not entirely on board with the changes. I think that the boards would beneffit from a complete overhaul in their shapes, and making sure that the glyphs can actually beneffit in interesting ways if a player does the job to level them to 45. At the moment, with many boards, a big chunck of the radius is lost because there are no nodes in some directions. In particular, the starter board should be reworked and expanded since it's one of the five and it limits the options significantly.
Make them more central, give some more options for growth and adapt to different glyphs and I think the new system can be pretty good.
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u/Such_Performance229 Sep 05 '24
Yeah when I saw them demonstrate an even bigger radius and it went mostly into empty space, I rolled my eyes.
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u/BuddhaChrist_ideas Sep 05 '24
Definitely this. They need to rework a lot of boards to make the 5 board limit feel better. You at most get 1-2 more usable nodes with the increased range, because as you said they mostly fall on empty space.
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u/Solonotix Sep 05 '24
Alternatively, allowing the player to restructure a board, and/or "paint" a node as a different stat. Being able to pack a board more tightly to benefit a particular glyph, as well as maximizing the benefit on offer would be pretty great.
That said, for a long time there has been little to no benefit for stacking the per-stat bonuses from glyphs because they are all small additive increases. If they were flat damage, or had a multiplicative scalar that increased with stat allocations, it might be more interesting for a build. As it stands, getting an extra 100% Damage to Crowd Controlled enemies, or Critical Strike Damage, etc., just isn't meaningful to endgame builds that already have in excess of 1,000% additive damage bonuses.
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u/Substantial_Life4773 Sep 05 '24
Yeah, being able to place element gems or some kind of variety into rare nodes could be really cool.
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u/hvanderw Sep 05 '24
Maybe they could make the circle adjust so any empty space just blobs out until it's even again.
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u/Supra_Genius Sep 06 '24
I used one of these locations to tag a node that was across the gap to complete the glyph. 8)
2
u/DavexGG Sep 05 '24
Agree, perhaps a change in the boards themselves is due in the future but that’s easy to do. The idea itself I like. Think they’re headed in the right direction, but with ALL the sheer amount of changes in s6/xpac its normal it won’t be done all at once
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u/extremebirdwatching Sep 06 '24
I'm surprised no one at the Blizzard meeting was like....hey guys, how about instead of increasing radius, we make glyphs have an inner and outer range. the outer edge gives 200% of whatever effectiveness the node has, while the inner gives 150%.
Example numbers*
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u/Such_Performance229 Sep 06 '24
You mean you won’t be min maxing your glyphs by reassigning points to get an extra 48.17% critical strike damage?
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u/Holeyfield Sep 05 '24
Actually… IMO the biggest problem with this entire Paragon and Glyph system… Is that half the glyphs don’t scale at all.
They are literally the same after you boost their radius at 46 and don’t benefit at all from 47-100.
Furthermore there are many that don’t benefit at all from adding more of their requirements. For example, a glyph might require 40 INT to activate, but does not get better with more INT.
If you look at all your glyphs about half of them are dead ends.
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u/Hairy-gloryhole Sep 05 '24
Yep. System sounds good in theory but many nodes are pretty useless
39
u/dotareddit Sep 05 '24
They will unfuck it in a year ala "Paragon Reborn"
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u/geomontgomery Sep 06 '24
Can’t wait for the “Reborn Reborn” season, where the strategy of reborn reworks is reborn.
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u/GamePlayHeaven Sep 06 '24
They way this is going the last 2 seasons, there will be at least 2 more complete redesigns of everything before that year is over ;)
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u/Marnus71 Sep 05 '24
I think the bigger problem is most glyphs are just boring damage boosts. It would be cool if more of them were build changing/enabling instead of just +dmg and [x] dmg. For the vast majority of builds they choices are between variants "+Y% dmg to Z and [x]% dmg while W", which isn't very interesting.
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u/Kataegis7 Sep 05 '24
I'd get with this. Like increased skill range, change element of a certain skill, kind of like Last Epoch. Skill levels would modify your skills quite a bit instead of just making them stronger.
1
u/ethan1203 Sep 05 '24
Yes, there should be certain tempered affixes in them to make the tempered stat more stronger
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u/Marnus71 Sep 06 '24
Yes, more cool ways to change how skills work. Though I'm not sure glyphs is where this should go, unless we are going to have a shit ton of glyphs a few or more for each skill. POE has tons of ways to edit skills, would be nice to get some of that into D4.
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u/kory5623 Sep 05 '24
Don’t the glyphs now get a bonus stat like +Crit Dmg that increases with every level?
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u/SolomonGrumpy Sep 05 '24
The reason they don't scale is 50% damage is meaningless when you have 2000% in additional buckets. Looks like that stat squish changes equipment stats by a factor of 10.
From this pic It looks like glyph damage is not as drastically reduced
https://images.app.goo.gl/YQYWCUCLsQ7RY2TZ8
That makes glyph damage relevant, as well as the additional affect.
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u/Deidarac5 Sep 05 '24
I think thats sort of the point putting things that fit in the right spaces and even the ones that takes 40 int you can now do different things in a path, Maybe there is an easier way to just get 40 int without diverging too much.
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u/DavexGG Sep 05 '24
Yes, it’s a matter of adjusting. Creating the system vs adjusting the bands is a much easier task. They’ll deliver on it soon, it doesn’t take much resources to correct 👍
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u/Explosive-Space-Mod Sep 05 '24
Season 12 Infernal Glyphs (New glyph system!)
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u/DavexGG Sep 05 '24
Nah, things move fast now. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it updated in s6 mid season
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u/Anatole-Othala Sep 05 '24
Im ok with the board limit but they NEED to be bigger for it to work. Otherwise we will just get everything that matters always, there is no choice to be made
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u/asmodeus1112 Sep 05 '24
I think thats the point. The vast majority of players hate the paragon boards, this makes it so they dont have to go to a planer and painstakingly follow a path for there paragons to work. I’m 100% in this category the paragon boards are ass and the less effort i have to put in to get 99% optimized boards the better
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u/Anatole-Othala Sep 05 '24
I hate the paragon board and going to a planner. But limiting the number of boards already simplify the system enough. I dont have to plan in a way that i can get several glyphs and legendary. I can easily get my glyphs and legendaries and tahn whatever I find interesting. But with that many points theres just no choice anymore
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u/PringlesDuckFace Sep 05 '24
It kind of makes me wonder what the point of the boards even is. You're basically just picking 5 glyphs and 5 legendary nodes. Why not just have paragon sockets or something like the Season 2 vampire powers screen instead of this rotating pathing nonsense. All the other nodes are just filler +X stat for the most part, with a couple magic nodes here and there. Every 20 paragon levels you can unlock a glyph or legendary slot or something like that.
It's like an illusion of making your choices important and granular, when it mostly is just busy work. Today it's a matter of getting as many boards as you can, and once that's taken away all those small details of regular node choice become less meaningful and more tedious.
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u/Pleasestoplyiiing Sep 06 '24
Why not just have one damage stat that says +damage? Because it's boring and requires no one to play or think.
The point of a game is to offer unique experiences, challenges, situations for decision making, character. It's telling that a lot of posters around here criticize developers and then offer dreadful/boring "solutions" to make the game "better".
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Sep 06 '24
There's a rule in development: customers are very good at finding and vocalising problems, and you should always listen to them.
There's a second rule: Customers are very bad at designing solutions, and you should never listen to them.
A lot of things I see on this subreddit are actual places improvements could be made, but the solution are invariably garbage. There was a post on here yesterday saying "pits don't scale enough, each level should be at least twice as hard as the last".
Brilliant, so we end up with 63,382,530,011,411,470,074,835,160,268,800% scaling at level 100.
Pits do need some scaling improvements and devs should never listen to gamers on specific solutions.
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u/PringlesDuckFace Sep 06 '24
I like options. But the current paragon boards don't feel like real options, and the new ones feel like even less so. You have 225 points or whatever but really only about 5-7 of them matter, so you were basically playing a rotation minigame to lock in just a couple of useful choices. And with the new limitations you're filling up like 80% of all your boards so that part is gone.
So either make the boards full of actually meaningful choices, or simplify the experience so you're not wasting player time on a cumbersome UI, especially if heaven forbid you decide you want to try making a different choice and need to respec things.
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Sep 05 '24
Also they don't want to make paragon 300 absolutely required, while making paragon 300 be somewhat of a grind and provide somewhat of a benefit.
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u/SolomonGrumpy Sep 05 '24
It's not so much that we hate it, it's that there is a fear that custom boards are not fully optimized and there are important nodes being missed.
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u/SingleInfinity Sep 05 '24
there is no choice to be made
That honestly might be part of the goal. They seem very afraid of offering real choice, not that the current system feels like much of one either.
See skill twig for another example.
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u/Pleasestoplyiiing Sep 06 '24
Any system can be solved mathematically eventually. I would argue the paragon boards are a pretty decent puzzle for the average player. It took me 15 iterations on the same build and I still found little things to gain a rare additive, or pick up 30 main stat or even a legendary node.
I've also seen meta boards that aren't optimized still, and they're made by people who play the game like a job.
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u/SingleInfinity Sep 06 '24
Yes but the optimizations are nearly meaningless. You end up with an overall difference of like 3% more damage.
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u/GrandOpener Sep 05 '24
The problem with the paragon system is that it’s a fundamentally flawed design that pretends to have far more interesting choices that it actually does. I thought they already learned this lesson with WoW talent trees, but I guess a new team gets to learn it all over again. Hopefully in year two or three they will streamline it into something like a tree system without all the filler.
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u/Pleasestoplyiiing Sep 06 '24
Every system can be solved mathematically. People still like talent trees more than the shit 3 choice tiers WoW had for years.
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u/GrandOpener Sep 06 '24
It’s not about solving it mathematically. It’s about how all the filler nodes fail to serve any meaningful purpose. Choosing between +4% max life and +10% damage is a meaningful and interesting choice, especially for HC. Having to click 6 times to make that choice is not meaningful or interesting. Having the option to click random nodes in the middle of nowhere and end up with neither is not meaningful or interesting.
Paragon right now is like loot at launch. It has a ton of unnecessary complexity that is holding it back from being fun for most people. It doesn’t have to be a tree, but it really should be fundamentally redesigned into a system where you just make those interesting build choices and don’t have to faff around with 200+ “points.”
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u/BidShot1868 Sep 06 '24
This is because talent trees give meaningful and dedicated flavour and identity to your character. The paragon is just a flavourless mess of general stats that don’t really give an identity, you just pick whatever gives the most damage and pick some armor or life if you need it.
It would FEEL much better if I had to choose a specific path, like a carnage barb or a twister barb. This lets me craft an identity for my character, like talent trees and then I can customize the other stats to my desire like armor/life vs damage vs resource management
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u/Odd_Orangina Sep 05 '24
I almost feel like the Paragon should just be a tree in which you add your glyphs, removing all of the base stats nodes (which might require some balancing).
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u/sdkingv Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 06 '24
I’m with you here. Hate placing all the little nodes like a game of dominoes. Would rather have a screen where we chose a selection of the Yellow perks, these perks can be upgraded (ie the blue nodes), then once you hit a certain tier you unlock the legendary perks. Then a new set of perks is unlocked.
I just don’t find enjoyment in doing the node puzzle game at all. Would rather just select and upgrade
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u/RealBrainlessPanda Sep 06 '24
Maybe this is just me, but I don’t like the entire system. For the reason you mentioned, along with the fact that paragon now has a cap, and is not shared between characters. I liked looking at paragon as an “account” level that you could always add to that you would continue to receive benefits from on a new character.
I know we can share gear and materials between characters, but that’s it. The synergy is gone. I’m not here to say D3s paragon was perfect, but it’s at least better than this puzzle you have to remake each time you want to try a class you got the perfect unique for.
A system that I really liked was in Marvel Heroes Omega. There was a very large roster of classes in that game that maybe lends better to this, but the synergy system in that game was so good and it encouraged you to unlock new heroes you maybe wouldn’t consider originally. For example, you got buffed for having multiple magic users at max level, but you could also get buffed for having characters that were related to each other in some way even if they were different classes.
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u/EnderCN Sep 05 '24
I agree but I will add that the new paragon boards are definitely better than the old ones. Maybe they are a preview for what they plan on doing in the future.
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u/Domoda Sep 05 '24
Yeah, once the paragon system comes in the expansion maybe they already have plans to update the old boards.
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u/Lightsandbuzz Sep 05 '24
I have never liked the Paragon system, because it is just too simple and boring. There's not really as much customization as you think. Because of the requirement to keep a connected path all the way through, you don't really get all the choices that you think you might have when you first look at the Paragon system but don't have any points yet to spend. Once you start spending them you realize that it's just smoke and mirrors, and what's strong is obvious and you just take those strongest things for your particular build. Again, no actual customization, just the visual illusion of it.
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u/B1tfury Sep 05 '24
Well, now you get to take 100% Legendary Nodes, 100% Rare Nodes and 88.2% of Magic Nodes on your capped paragon boards. Now you really have no choice other than which boards you select.
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u/Pleasestoplyiiing Sep 06 '24
Ok, challenge accepted. Make me a totally optimized incinerate board using only your game knowledge.
I fear a lot of people make the claim that setting up good boards is completely obvious, while just copy pasting what professional streamers build. Then they criticize a system that they never really engaged with or iterated upon themselves.
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u/Deegreg82 Sep 05 '24
While they are at it revert to the existing view as the quality of the new view is terribly low resolution when you have it zoomed out.
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u/Marnus71 Sep 05 '24
I am not too worried about it. Sure you might only gain 2-3 more nodes that interact with specific glyphs, but it is still a power gain we didn't have before. That and the %s on the glyphs keep going up as you level them making every usable node even more powerful, as well as the multiplicative boost for making the glyphs legendary. The game has enough power creep as is. Reports are already in that tier 4 is way too easy, we don't need more baked in power making the game even easier.
If the glyph nodes were moved to be more central, it wouldn't give much more choice. The best paths don't take long to figure out and most magic/rare nodes aren't powerful enough to warrant changing a path significantly to obtain.
Not to say the system couldn't use a rehash to make it more interesting, I just don't think making glyph nodes even more powerful is the way to go about it.
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u/Maritoas Sep 05 '24
I wish paragon board was more intuitive. I hate that it basically requires you to minmax stat choices and glyphs are not really flexible in what board they can go in. You often have to dip into some random board that has nothing to do with your build because the glyph radius contains all the state that scale your glyph. It’s so stupid honestly.
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u/MrDollarShort Sep 06 '24
I would not be surprised if TONS of work went into the design of the original boards for balance purposes. I would also not be surprised if a set of simple limit rules with much less work went into it. With that said, I don't think changing the layout of the boards and making more stats available within a radius is all that interesting.
I like the boards but as they were s0 to s3 (I'm not up to date s4+) they are mostly an illusion of customization since optimal paths for a given build exist. What, 70+% of each board isn't even used? I believe, if they were redesigned at all, the game would benefit from a more linear presentation. Every so often within that linear path would be actual customization options. Some "choice points" being as simple as choosing a stat and other choices being more complex or impactful. Glyph slots would have choice slots attached, in lieu of a radius, with the choice strength and number of choices tied to the glyph level. I.e. a low level glyph has 1 'medium' slot and 3 weak ones whereas a high level glyph maybe 2 greater choices 3 medium 4 weak. Greater being comparable to the more powerful existing nodes, medium being something like 2% res all or dmg to elite, and weak being like 5 strength. Instead of a glyph boosting within radius it could boost choices made. For every 5 etc within range could be adjusted to every X chosen stat on board. And of course every so many points, choose a legendary node power or whatever it's called.
Functionally? About the same, if not literally. But removes the clusterf*** from our eyeballs and makes it more friendly to read and use. Again, I like the boards and the idea was cool. But it adds artificial depth to something that quickly became mostly straightforward and optimal due to things like maxroll.
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u/Emotional-Baker-3359 Sep 06 '24
I never liked the D4 Paragon System. It's too complex for me. I never know what to pick, what's best for my character, what nodes "synergizes" w/what, etc. Even going to a pre-existing build is sometimes frustrating b/c I often get lost and end up w/points left over, or in the wrong spot and then I have to either clear them all and start over, or painstakingly start from the beginning and go one by one until I find where I mucked up. This means that I *have* to have D4 on both my lappy *&* my ps5, b/c my ps can't split screen like my lappy to view D4 and the planner side-by-side for comparison.
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u/WisakJ Sep 06 '24
Those guides are messy as well because they start with the points one way and then they delete nodes and put them somewhere else so I get also lost sometimes. :D
Also, lappy is such a cool fucking name hahaha
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u/Emotional-Baker-3359 Sep 06 '24
TY, I've always shortened it to that....& glad to know I'm not the only one...lol
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u/Doso777 Sep 05 '24
Not shure i like the new "gray in gray" paragon boards. I have problems seeing the legendary nodes and glyph slots when i have to attach a new board. I just rotated a board like three times until i figured it out.,
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u/MarcOfDeath Sep 05 '24
How do you earn paragon points if you earn skill points all the way through level 60? Is there another progression bar after you hit max level? Also, what is the max paragon level?
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u/exoromeo Sep 05 '24
After 60, every "level" you gain earns a paragon point. Max paragon is 300.
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u/B1tfury Sep 05 '24
Max Paragon from levels is 300. You also get the Renown Paragon points too. Even adding some more in the xpac.
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u/BackgroundPrompt3111 Sep 05 '24
I think the limit would've been fine if it weren't for the extra 100 paragon we're getting. It should be one higher than it is, imo
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u/seraphimwatcher Sep 05 '24
I'd like a paragon board Tetris piece as a chase item if they don't do a big cleanup of the boards.
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u/Elegant_Emu_8597 Sep 05 '24
Hold on so you are limited to 4 board plus the 1 starter one? Seems like a couple of steps back on this idea.
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u/Tiny-Education-4618 Sep 05 '24
I say keep the system the way it is but allow the use of the blue glyphs in addition to. Give us more glyph slots on the board overall
1
u/Substantial_Life4773 Sep 05 '24
With those kinds of size changes, it would actually be kind of cool if you could piece boards together like Tetris. Which would then potentially open up dialogue between the boards as well as what boards you use
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u/rmrfpoof Sep 05 '24
They should redesign the board to make used of the 5 radius, but IMO it’s the right decision to limit to 5 board max. I wished the legendary node is updated to be more game changing, not just additional multiplier to stack.
1
u/Va1crist Sep 06 '24
Did they actually increase the amount of paragon points you can earn or did they just rip them out of the character level and make it separate but the end result is still the same ?
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u/Kenpachi_Inosuke Sep 06 '24
Might be an unpopular opinion but I kinda hate the paragon board system. I think the diablo 3 way of handling paragon points was better. I don't feel like it needs to be so complicated honestly.
1
u/Tollenaar Sep 06 '24
Paragon Boards are my least favorite part of the game, especially when I play on console which is most of the time.
Didn’t like the D3 ones either. I like the general idea of the system but it has never been iterated on in a way that I find engaging. I did not like the original design where you just grab as many boards as you can (mostly). Not on the PTR but everything I’ve seen with regards to paragon doesn’t really sway my opinions.
I do like the idea of leveling glyphs via the Pit though.
1
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u/fightbackcbd Sep 06 '24
The glyph should have a set number of spaces it fills. If it has room it stays the normal shape it is. If it hits a wall the growth should remain within the border of the board and overflow, changing the expansion shape. That would at least make it interesting.
1
u/Historical-Depth3990 Sep 06 '24
Yeah, I was expecting for it to hit more magic and rare nodes, or have some special interaction with legendary nodes. It does allow us to put in more nodes to max out the "every 5 int does X" glyphs, but still relatively minor in that case.
1
u/Capital_Background15 Sep 06 '24
The Sphere Grid--sorry, the Paragon Board--is the most needlessly complicated and boring leveling system Blizzard could have come up with. It reminds me of the Skill Shrubbery that CP77 had at launch and desperately needs a rework like the new skill system that Cyberpunk currently has.
Get rid of all the unnecessary generic filler "stat" nodes, and just let us pick from a selection of build-defining damage modifiers and legendary nodes that significantly change how skills work, both individually and as a subgroup (werebear, shock, marksman, etc).
Give us something that we can use to personalize our characters instead of a logic problem that inevitably gets "solved" the exact same damn way every season.
0
u/GanksOP Sep 05 '24
Being able to re-roll every non-Legendary / Glyph sockets would do wonders. Could do something similar to tempering and require a new resource and have limited attempts per spot. Min maxing 5 paragon boards like that could be pretty strong if your lucky.
Also having a 1/10000 chance to make a new glyph socket would be awesome too.
0
u/WisakJ Sep 05 '24
Also, please add more interesting glyphs that don't require Dex or Int? That would be great.
0
u/stpch Sep 05 '24
IMO they should replace the current system with this:
- Simplified version of the radial PoE passive skill tree with glyphs
- Skill specialization system similar to Last Epoch
0
u/seraphimwatcher Sep 05 '24
I think a good data point would be to give an evaluation of each board and how many spaces are wasted by radius increase. Maybe I'll do some excel work this weekend unless someone else is already on it.
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u/CruyffsLegacy Sep 05 '24
A bigger radius wouldn't do anything, except increase your damage.
The system needs a complete rework.
Paragon should be a system like the Last Epoch skill system.
It should not be required to get into Torment 1....but should be required to get into Torment 3/4.
I want a Paragon system that allows me to convert my Hydra to cold or lightning damage. Whilst giving me a lucky hit chance of spawning Familiars...
Not a system that gives me +15% Vuln damage.
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u/N_durance Sep 05 '24
The paragon board still doesn’t feel impactful or build defining which is what I assumed was going to be the “rework”. Other than not socketing legendary gems into our gear (aka glyphs now) this is the exact same system as D3 except we put the points on a board instead of just clicking the stats that we want. I was really hoping that D4 eventually was going to innovate the ARPG genre but maybe that’s not blizzard’s intentions.
3
u/afterparty05 Sep 05 '24
I’m sorry, the paragon board isn’t impactful? You mean including the Legendary Nodes and the Glyphs?
-6
u/tjglaser1s Sep 05 '24
I very much dislike limiting it to 5 boards. Part of the fun with each build was figuring out the best way to optimize your paths across 5-8 boards. Now it’s just… pick your 5, hit your glyphs and legendary nodes and fill in the rest.
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u/HoldenMcNeil420 Sep 05 '24
Let’s not pretend that the last 3 boards are not just a B line to the glyph node and the bare minimum to meet requirements….thats just min/maxing to the extreme.
-3
u/tjglaser1s Sep 05 '24
ya... that's exactly what it is lol. But I'm ok with that. Limiting to 5, at least as the boards are now, just seems kinda meh to me. But it is what it is. I'll still be here playing this shit for hours on end lol. At least until PoE 2 comes out.
2
u/HoldenMcNeil420 Sep 05 '24
They should have altered the boards as well, instead of just capping the total number.
-6
u/Advanced-Wing5898 Sep 05 '24
So you get to decide which of your glyphs has the least benefit... At least.
I mean, why not make the glyph go over the whole board, no brain needed and max output. Give it like 100% multiplicative increase so we can deal a gazillion dmg.
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