Paragon 2.0
Paragon 2.0 refers to a redesign of the Paragon system, due sometime in 2014, shortly before the release of the Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls expansion pack. The system is still under development, but many details have been revealed since the system was first explained in detail at Gamescom 2013.
Paragon 2.0 will still work as an end game feature, providing players with a way to continue earning levels and experience even once their characters have reached max level. There are several major changes to the system:
- All experience earned by max level characters will count towards an account-wide Paragon level. This level, rather than the individual character levels, will award paragon points that can be spent on all characters; not just the specific character who earned the experience.
- The Paragon levels earned and points awarded to Hardcore and Softcore characters are tracked separately. Since Paragon levels are account wide, the experience gained by Hardcore characters remains even after the characters die.
- Paragon points allow for a great deal of character customization, with specific bonuses that can be assigned to things like attributes, offensive stats including CC, CD, and AS, defensive stats like blocking %, and general properties like Faster Movement and Pickup Radius.
- There is no maximum paragon level (though the individual bonuses have varying hard caps).
- The Paragon levels earned by all existing characters will be added into the system when it goes live.
- Characters at Paragon 100 do not earn experience currently, so any play time with them prior to Paragon 2.0 is "wasted" in terms of exp gain.
- Exp earned by Hardcore characters who die before Paragon 2.0 goes live will probably not be counted.
Full details have not yet been finalized for the system, and many questions remain. How much experience is required for paragon levels, how many points are awarded per level, if there are individual character bonuses as well as account bonuses, etc.
Contents
Paragon Points and Bonuses
Each paragon level on an account will grant each character on the account 1 paragon point to spend on various bonuses. Read that again; if a player has 50 paragon points to distribute and 6 softcore characters, each one of the 6 gets the full 50 points. The points are not shared between characters; each character gets the full amount. The only differentiation is between Hardcore and Softcore, since Paragon levels and points are not shared between HC and SC.
The points can be spent on various properties in the four different tabs. Not all of the properties or the size of their bonuses are yet known, and the system remains under development, but key facts have been revealed. [1]
Bonuses per tab:
- Core tab: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Vitality. (Confirmed.)
- Attack tab: Attack Speed, Critical hit Chance, Critical hit Damage, Cooldown reduction. (Confimed)
- Defense tab: +Blocking % confirmed. Others? (Res All? Recovery time reduction?)
- Utility tab: Movement Speed and Pickup Radius confirmed. Others? (Magic Find, Gold Find, Experience?)
The amount of bonus granted by each paragon point is still under development, but as of Gamescom 2013 each point in a Core attribute granted 5 points to that attribute. The bonuses in the Attack tab were a bit more varied:
- Attack Speed: +.20% per point, 50 point hard cap. (Maximum of +10% IAS boost.)
- Critical hit Chance: +.20% per point, 50 point hard cap. (Maximum of +10% Critical hit Chance.)
- Critical hit Damage: 1 point per point, 50 point hard cap. (Maximum of +50% Critical hit Damage increase.)
- Cooldown reduction. -- .20% per point, 50 point hard cap. (Maximum of 100% reduction.)
Paragon 2.0 and Ladder Seasons
One obvious objection to the Sharagon system is that eventually players will need a great deal of experience to advance another Paragon level, and this would lead to a very static feeling. Many players have suggested some sort of individual character level system along with the account wide Paragon 2.0 system, but Blizzard hasn't said anything on that front. Their solution to the problem seems to be a ladder season system, which will periodically reset paragon levels for players who wish to opt in.
Details are not yet finalized, but the design seems to be that a player with say, 134 Paragon levels on their account could choose to create new characters in the new ladder, and those characters would not have access to the pre-existing account Paragon points. Those characters would thus start out at Paragon Level 0, and gain Paragon points rapidly with levels, giving players a feeling of accomplishment and progress. Ladders would run for an unknown amount of time (probably for a few months) and at the end of that time all Paragon level experience earned would be added to the non-ladder Paragon level experience. Thus players would not lose any of their experience or progress for non-ladder characters.
Ladders would presumably work as they do in Diablo 2 in terms of giving players a fresh economy, with non-ladder items not transferring over to new characters in the new ladder. Then, when the ladder season ends all the experience and items become non-ladder again and merge together. Andrew Day commented on the ladder system in early September, 2013.[2]
Travis Day: That is currently the plan. Paragon experience will be account but will also be broken out by game play mode. Players who play in Hardcore will have a separate hardcore paragon level from their non hardcore characters.
When a season ends all of the paragon experience you have earned will be rolled into the appropriate pool of paragon experience for the account and you will be able to start at 0 again in the new season.
This is all still a work in progress and subject to change but that is what we are currently intending.
Hardcore Character Death
One key element of the Paragon 2.0 system is that Hardcore characters apply their gained experience to the account, and thus a character death will still end that character and lose their equipment, but the experience and Paragon Points that character gained will remain after their death. That feature appears to be set in stone by Blizzard.
What is not set is how Blizzard will handle the experience earned by HC characters who died prior to the Paragon 2.0 system. Once the system was announced there was much debate[3] about that issue, with players advocating both sides of the issue. As questions mounted about it, and HC players began to retire their high level characters in order to not risk losing them before Paragon 2.0 came in, Travis Day posted that Blizzard was leaning towards including the experience from dead HCs when Paragon 2.0 went live.[4]
The current plan is to do the same thing with all of your hc characters. We are still discussing what we do with dead vs active characters but I'm leaning towards including experience of dead hc heroes as well.
The purpose of the paragon 2.0 system is the reward players who want to invest lots of time as opposed to specific characters. Under that philosophy I don't see any reason to deny hc players experience they previously earned.
Early Paragon 2.0 Development
In mid-2013 the developers began suggesting some future changes to the Paragon Levels system.
One main question fans always ask is what will happen to Paragon Levels in the Expansion. It's widely-assumed the cap will increase from 100, but it's not clear what bonus that would provide, with Magic Find and Gold Find already maxed out at the 300% hard cap at Paragon 100. Perhaps the MF/GF cap would be increased? [5]
We've definitely talked about things like taking Paragon and decoupling it from your character specifically and making it something that is more account-over working. So that any time you invest in the game is rewarded and you don’t feel like we’re taking anything away from you if you want to try new characters or try out different play styles within the game. That’s something we've looked into a lot.
Also, maybe potentially adding some sort of customization within the paragon system. Sort of in the vein of a throwback at a Diablo II start location. We've looked at things like that. We definitely have plans to flesh it our more in time. We don’t need to design it from the ground up. What it does, it does well, and we just need to make it more encompassing.
You've also mentioned that you’re not looking into increasing the cap of Paragon. It’s going to be a hundred for at least a while, right?
Travis Day: For the foreseeable future. I think at some point you can expect the cap to go up. The cap isn't even really there to necessarily make an end point to the player. The intent was for paragon 100 to take a long time to get to. Which it does. But as we improve different aspects of the game (make changes to Monster Power, Monster Density, etc.) the time that it takes players to fill out that cap is shorter than we’d like. And once you do cap out, it definitely removes a very important reward for you – your XP stops going up. So that’s something that we want to address – at some point we’ll definitely look at that cap.
About those customizations to the paragon system – what about the people who are already capped? Will they be receiving any kind of reward on patch day?
Travis Day: Yes, absolutely. If we’re making the sweeping changes to the Paragon, the people who invested time will certainly have the reward that is associated with that investment.
